Booker authors comment in aftermath of Mumbai attacks

World media seeks opinion of Man Booker novelists

8 December 2008

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the world's media has been inviting winning and shortlisted Man Booker Prize novelists to comment.

Aravind Adiga, the Indian-Australian author who won the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner with his novel The White Tiger, was asked to comment on the attacks in The Times (UK, 29 November 2008) and on  BBC Radio 4's PM programme. Adiga was born in Chennai but now lives in Mumbai, and was in the city at the time of the attacks.

Amitav Ghosh, one of India's best-known writers, gave his opinion to the New York Times on whether the Mumbai attacks were ‘India's 9/11', and was also invited onto BBC2'S Newsnight programme to discuss the attacks. Ghosh was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008 with his novel Sea of Poppies.

British-Pakistani Mohsin Hamid commented on the attacks in The Guardian and BBC2's Newsnight. Hamid's novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.

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