Rejection is the reason behind creating my new book, says Gaurav Sharma

Have you ever thought you might come across a book so genius that it almost leaves you ‘blank’? Well, it turns out that you are in luck. Author Gaurav Sharma’s newest offing The Indian Story of an Author (TISOAA) manages to do just that!

The right amount of humour and satire combined together TISOAA, published by the Delhi based Think Tank Books, makes for some ‘intriguing’ read.

Picture this, 13-pages of wit and humour later (and the author is adept at both), you reach the climax, poetic, in the sense that Sharma’s climax is nothing but pages and pages of nothing.

The Indian Story of an Author manages to shock and amaze you for all the possible reasons.

Gaurav Sharma, in his book perfectly captures the vagaries of the publishing world.

In conversation with this correspondent, the young author says that the reason behind writing The Indian Story of an Author was a result of his frustration after getting his manuscript of the soon-to-be publsihed God of the Sullied rejected by almost every Indian publisher.

“I created this book to symbolically protest against publishing houses for they essentially preach to cater each manuscript with equal amount of diligence but are inclined more towards celebrity authors and their work even if that work is of low quality,” Gaurav opines.

The author says that The Indian Story of an Author shows the plight of budding and self-published writers in India and his inspiration behind it has been the numerous authors whose low quality work got published by bigger brands because they wrote, “something utterly colloquial-romantic or chick lit.”

Sharma, in his ‘laced-with-sarcasm- way’ says that TISOAA is a literary criticism laced with satire and sarcasm.

“There is not much to read in the book but this one shall stand out in anybody’s library collection. The book is unconventional, something different and blunt.”

A book, by any literary standards garners a life of its own on being published, open to interpretations and re-interpretations. Being a seminal work, far removed from the usual conundrums inundating the market, one wonders how will the book be perceived by readers, Sharma says, “The book states on its last printed page, “Pages have been intentionally left blank. Utilise them at your convenience.” I have got messages from the buyers, telling (showing) me what they did with the blank pages. Some kept it as is, while others made my book their diary.”

Sharma knows that the book is no best seller, it has no gripping plot, no true climax, or a love story to entwine one’s beating heart around, however, what it does is give readers a canvas to turn it into something more than just pages.

It only takes a few written words to change a blank page into the beginning of an adventure.