Tabish Khair

Author of The Thing about Thugs, Tabish Khair is an award-winning poet, journalist, critic, educator and novelist. A citizen of India, he lives in Denmark and teaches literature at Aarhus University.

From his Q & A with Sparsh Sharma at the Aarhus Culture Blog:

Q: How was the journey from Gaya, a small town in Bihar, to Aarhus, Denmark, of a prodigious Indian, now a global literary figure?

TK: It was a hard journey at times, and it has not ended for me, and never will, because I see myself as a ‘small town cosmopolitan’ writer. In the sense that small towns today and in the past have been as ‘cosmopolitan’, and sometimes in different, more creative ways, as big cities; it is a mistake to associate openness only with big cities and conservatism only with small ones. This self-conception makes it difficult for me to accept some of the perspectives of many metropolitan writers or ‘global’ editors, and leaves me a bit in the cold, without the kind of patronage that has become essential to major literary success these days. But I am happy trekking on my own journey, and I have luckily had a fair bit of success on my own terms too.

Q: Some of the remarkable memories of this long journey of hard work and commercial/critical success?

TK: I will save those for my memoirs, if I ever write one, or (what is more likely) I will fashion them into fiction. But one strand that runs through my memories is an awareness of these supposedly peripheral spaces and a suspicion of worldly success, including my own. I feel lucky. I know that many others with just as much to give will not be so lucky. And hence...[read on]

Learn more about the book and author at Tabish Khair's website.

The Page 69 Test: The Thing about Thugs.

My Book, The Movie: The Thing About Thugs.

--Marshal Zeringue