The 2007 Booker longlist has been released, and three out of the 13 are desi authors:

Nikita Lalwani - Gifted

Born in Rajasthan, India, Lalwani moved to Cardiff, Wales, when she was one year old. She went on to direct factual television and documentaries for the BBC.

Gifted, her debut novel, tells the story of a child prodigy who is pushed towards rebellion by her parents’ demanding schedules and expectations… [Link]

Sounds like a literary Opal Mehta:

She’s figured that the likelihood of her walking home from school with the boy she likes, John Kemble, is 0.2142, a probability severely reduced by the lacy dress and thick woolen tights her father, and Indian émigré, forces her to wear…. a teenage Rumi is at the center of an intense campaign by her parents to make her the youngest student ever to attend Oxford University… As her father outlines ever more regimented study schedules, her mother longs for India and forcefully reminds Rumi of her roots. [Link]

Indra Sinha - Animal’s People

Sinha was born in India and educated in the UK, where he went on to become an advertising copywriter and published a translation of the Kama Sutra.

The 1984 industrial disaster in Bhopal forms the setting for the story, about a man who was left with mental and physical defects after such a catastrophe. It is partly based on the life of Sunil Kumar, who committed suicide aged 34 last year. [Link]

… as a follow-up to The Death of Mr. Love, Sinha’s hugely enjoyable Mumbai epic debut, Animal’s People - part coming-of-age Bildungsroman, part vicious critique of corporate terrorism - is a bold and punchy tale…

Nearly 20 years ago, Khaufpur was devastated by a chemical leak at a factory owned by an American firm, referred to by Khaufpuris as “the Kampani”… Animal is condemned to walk on all fours after the poisons attacked his body and froze his spine… He finds himself plagued by hope: that he might walk upright on two feet and, by extension, win the hand of elegant Nisha - a hopeless dream in itself, because Nisha loves Zafar, a saintly preacher of non-violent action against the Kampani…

Animal, in his attempts to deny the hope fluttering in his breast, concentrates on baser instincts, such as masturbating while jamisponding (as in “spying” - say it quickly), getting laid (he is hung like a horse) or poisoning his love- rival Zafar. [Link]

[Kumar] was finally diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia - a mental illness which affected many gas survivors - and began treatment. When he hanged himself, he left a note saying he was committing suicide not because he was mentally unsound but with all his wits about him. [Link]

Indra Sinha… set up a clinic in 1996 to help survivors of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster… [Link]

Mohsin Hamid - The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Hailing from Pakistan, Hamid studied at Princeton and Harvard in the US before working as a management consultant in New York.

In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, his second novel, a Pakistani Princeton graduate becomes a high-flyer in Manhattan. But he discovers a different side to his adopted home and his own beliefs after the 11 September attacks. [Link]

The other authors on the shortlist are Nicola Barker, Edward Docx (whose last name is also the new file format in Word 2007), Twan Tan Eng, Anne Enright, Peter Ho Davies, Lloyd Jones, Ian McEwan, Catherine O’Flynn, Michael Redhill, and A.N. Wilson.

Hamid currently has 7:1 odds to win, Sinha is at 10:1 and Lalwani 12:1. McEwan is favored because he’s a past winner, and in fact is the only contender who’s been shortlisted before.

Related posts: The wounded pamphleteer, The new Booker Prize, Partying in Pakistan, Kiran Desai wins the Booker, Desai, Murr nominated for Booker, India: A Million Slush Pile Rejects Now, I coulda been a contendah, The Prophecy, Booker ‘em, Dano, ‘Moth Smoke,’ the film