Book description
India is home to almost three million HIV cases. But AIDS is still a
disease stigmatized and shrouded in denial. It is stigma that prevents
people from openly discussing the facts around HIV, and keeps them
from getting treatment. Stigma leads to discrimination against HIV
positive people in hospitals, schools and even among families.
In this ground-breaking anthology, sixteen of India's well-known
writers go on the road to tell the human story behind the epidemic.
William Dalrymple meets the devadasis ('temple women'), many of whom
have become victims of HIV; Kiran Desai travels to the coast of Andhra
where the sex workers are considered the most desirable and Salman
Rushdie spends a day with Mumbai's transgenders. These writers travel
the country to talk to housewives, vigilantes, homosexuals, police and
sex-workers and together they create a complex and gripping picture of
AIDS in India: who it is affecting, how and why.
Eye-opening, hard-hitting and moving, AIDS Sutra will show
you a side to India rarely seen before.
This anthology was produced in collaboration with Avahan, the
India AIDS Initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Proceeds will be used to support programs for children affected by
HIV in India.
Kiran Desai was born in New Delhi and lived there till she was
14. She spent a year in England before moving to the US. Her novel
The Inheritance of Loss won the Man Booker Prize in 2006. She
is the daughter of writer Anita Desai.
Salman Rushdie is the author of eight novels, one collection
of short stories, and four works of non-fiction, and the co-editor of
The Vintage Book of Indian Writing. In 1993 Midnight's
Children was judged to be the 'Booker of Bookers', the best novel
to have won the Booker Prize in its first 25 years. The Moor's Last
Sigh won the Whitbread Prize in 1995, and the European Union's
Aristeion Prize for Literature in 1996. He is a Fellow of the Royal
Society of Literature and a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.
Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta and grew up in India, and
now lives in England. His acclaimed novels include A Suitable
Boy and An Equal Music, which was shortlisted for the
Booker Prize.
Amit Chaudhuri was born in Calcutta, attended UCL and now
teaches at the University of East Anglia. Among his many acclaimed
novels, poetry collections and critical essays, he edited the
Vintage Book of Modern Indian Literature. He is also a
classical musician.
Siddhartha Deb was born in India in 1970 and moved to New
York in 1998 on a fellowship. He has worked as a journalist in Delhi
and Calcutta, and writes for the Guardian, New Statesman
and TLS.
Nikita Lalwani was born in Rajasthan, India, and raised in
Cardiff, Wales. Her first novel Gifted was longlisted for the
2007 Man Booker Prize, and will be followed by her second novel The
Village in 2009. She lives in London.
Nalini Jones's collection of short stories, What You Call
Winter was published in 2007. She was born in Rhode Island,
received an M. F.A from Columbia University and now lives in Connecticut.
Shobhaa De is an Indian journalist and novelist. She began
her career as a model but became a journalist in the 1970s when she
founded and edited three popular Indian magazines. She is now a
freelance writer and lives in India with her husband and six children
Sunil Gangopadhyay is the author of over 200 books, including
novels, poetry, children's fiction, short stories, travel writing and
critical writing. He is an important literary and cultural figure in India.
Jaspreet Singh is the author of a novel, Chef, a play,
Speak Oppenheimer, and Seventeen Tomatoes, a
collection of stories awarded the McAuslan Best First Book Prize. He
lives in Canada.
William Dalrymple is an internationally acclaimed historian
and writer. He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of
Books, The Guardian, the New Statesman and The
New Yorker, and his bestselling books include The White
Mughals and The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty. He
divides his time between New Delhi, Edinburgh and London.
Sonia Faleiro is an award-winning journalist and author of a
novel, The Girl. Contributing editor at Vogue India and
writer-at-large for Tehelka, India's independent news magazine,
she is working on a non-fiction book about the bar dancers of Bombay,
where she currently lives.
Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi's debut novel, The Last Song
of Dusk, won the Betty Trask Award and the Premio Grinzane
Cavour Prize in Italy. He lives and works in Bombay.
Dr C. K Lakshmi writes fiction under the pseudonym Ambai in
Tamil, and is the author of two collections of stories, A Purple
Sea and In a Forest, A Deer. Currently a college lecturer
in New Delhi, she is Director of SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives
for Research on Women).
Mukul Kesavan a critically acclaimed, bestselling writer,
essayist and journalist. He is also a cricket enthusiast, and his book
Men in White was published by Penguin India in 2007.
Aman Sethi is a Delhi-based reporter with the fortnightly
national Indian news magazine, Frontline where he covers
infrastructure, environment and urban ecologies. His first book is
expected in 2009.
Amartya Sen (Foreword) is an Indian economist and
philosopher. He won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1998 and the
Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in 1999. A former
honorary president of Oxfam and Master of Trinity College Cambridge,
he now teaches at Harvard University in the USA. His many books
include Choice, Welfare and Measurement, Development as
Freedom and Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny.
