CONGRATULATIONS TO DORIS LESSING for winning the Nobel Prize for literature (and the 1.5 million US dollars that comes with it). The news was announced last night.
I love her books. A few years ago, she came to Hong Kong and did a book-signing at the Star Ferry Bookshop.
On the way there, I told my wife that if she got talking to us, she must in no way mention that I was a writer. “She is the god of writers. Compared to her, I am nothing, lower than a worm. These days, anyone who has written a letter to their local paper refers to themselves as a writer,” I said. “It’s not right. She’s a writer. The rest of us are merely typists.”
We arrived at the bookshop, expecting to have to fight our way through crowds.
In the event, there was no one there. Ms Lessing sat alone at a table, reading a book.
As I approached, narrowly resisting the urge to genuflect or fall on my knees, I was amazed to discover that the book she was reading was one of mine.
I duly asked for her autograph on my Collected Works.
Wanting to make conversation (book signings can be very lonely), she asked: “And what do you do, Mr Vittachi?”
“Er, well actually, I wrote that,” I said, pointing to the book she was holding.
So it ended up with her signing my book and me signing hers.
So if her biographers find a trashy bit of humour on her bookshelf, they can blame me.
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A US PUBLISHER has signed a two-book deal with an author named Xu Xiaobing for a Chinese epic family history, I hear. Not sure of the details, but the first volume will be called Feathered Serpent and will appear in August 2008. The publisher is Atria, a division of Simon and Schuster. If it is the same Xu Xiaobing that I am thinking of, this is the photographer who took the famous portraits of Chairman Mao, so we should certainly get a lot of close-to-the-action realism in the book.
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DEEPIKA SHETTY has done a TV report for Channel News Asia on the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. Check it out at this address. Hasn’t she got the most gorgeous hair in this video? In a Facebook posting, I referred to her as “the Jennifer Aniston of Singapore”.
