Dreams of the educated-dispossessed

Falling Through the Roof by Thubten Samphel Rupa and Co, 2008

Indian authors writing in English have been on a winning streak over the past decade, publishing novels to wide international acclaim. Over the past five years alone, two Man Booker Prizes have gone to writers of Indian origin. But what exactly is meant by the term 'Indian novel'? V S Naipaul, perhaps the pre-eminent writer of Indian origin, was not born in India, and has lived most of his life in England. Pico Iyer, too: born in England, lives in Japan. These designations can certainly get tricky. Indeed, commenting on journalist Tarun Tejpal's book The Alchemy of Desire (2005), Naipaul himself said, "At last, a brilliantly original novel from India." If that is the case, Tibetan exile Jamyang Norbu's The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes is also a novel 'from India'. And now we have a new novel by a Tibetan based in India, written by the spokesperson for the Dharamsala government-in-exile, Thubten Samphel, coming out just as the Tibetan diaspora is marking its 50th year since the start of exile, in March.