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- News: Above Average has entered its Third Edition. There are now 21,000 copies of the book in circulation. 2nd July 2008.
- Blog: On the Indian-American blog Sepia Mutiny, Sandhya mentions Above Average in a post about the heavy metal culture in urban India. 28th April 2008.
- Press: Ahmede Hussain interviewed Amitabha for The Daily Star, a Bangladeshi newspaper. The interview is also available on his blog. 26th April 2008.
- Press: Coverage around the Chennai reading.
- Writing: Amitabha's monthly column on books Simply Read has started in Hindustan Times' weekend supplement Brunch. The column will appear on the 2nd Sunday of each month. The first column appeared on 13th January 2008.
- Year-end round up: Amitabha talks to Deccan Herald about the books he's read in 2007 and the books he's looking forward to in 2008. 30th December 2007.
- Year-end round up: Outlook magazine calls Above Average one of the surprises of the year. Issue dated 14th January 2008.
- Bestseller Listings: #15 in India Today's monthly nationwide bestsellers list. Issue dated 10th December 2007.
- Bestseller Listings: #4 in The Hindu's Metro Plus, Hyderabad fiction top 10. 29th November 2007.
- Press: Fad magazine names Above Average one of it's book picks for Nov 2007, saying that
... the book manages to effortlessly capture the thoughts of a young man coming of age, while creating characters that make you go "I knew someone exactly like that!"
I had bought this novel "ABOVE AVERAGE" by Amitabha Bagchi from the Wheeler on the station. It costed me round 200 bucks which I thought wasnt worth spending. After all, I didnt have enough money to eat CHICKEN MANCHURIAN+FRIED RICE by the end leg of the journey ...I was only moved by the novel so much that it got me to write this post in scenes like this.
- Bestseller Listings: Deccan Herald, Fiction top 10. 14th October 2007.
- Press: Coverage around the Kolkata launch
- Kolkata Launch:
- Oxford Bookstore, Park Street.
- 5th October 2007, Friday, 7PM.
- Press: Amitabha weighs in on the increasing length of book titles in The Hindu's Metro Plus. 27th September 2007.
In 1996 a professor at IIT Delhi waved her hand in a sweeping arc and said to me: why don't you write about all this? Being an obedient student, I nodded. Although within, I was thinking that this was a weird idea that no one would ever want to read such a book. Besides, what was there to write about?
- Bestseller Listings: #3 in The Hindu's Metro Plus, Visakhapatnam fiction list. 11th August 2007.
- Press: Times of India's lifestyle supplement What's Hot in its first anniversary issue calls Above Average "the best IIT book till date." 10th August 2007.
- Bestseller Listings: #3 in The Hindu's Metro Plus, Hyderabad fiction list. 9th August 2007.
- Bestseller Listings: #3 in The Hindu's Metro Plus, Visakhapatnam fiction list. 28th July 2007.
- Press: Coverage around the Hyderabad launch
- Hyderabad Launch: Chief guest, Theatre personality Vijay Marur
- Crossword, Banjara Hills (City Centre, 1st Floor).
- 11th July 2007, Wednesday, 6:30PM.
- Bestseller Listings: #7 in India Today's monthly nationwide bestsellers list. Issue dated 9th July 2007.
- Bestseller Listings:
- #2 in Deccan Herald's fiction bestseller list. 17th June 2007.
- #6 in The Hindu's Metro Plus, Hyderabad fiction list. 14th June 2007.
- Video: A video of the reading at the Delhi launch of Above Average has been added on the audio and video page. A longer video is hosted at meravideo.com and youtube. 3rd June 2007.
- Bangalore Launch: Chief guest, eminent novelist Anita Nair
- Crossword Residency Road
- 26th May 2007, Saturday, 7PM.
- Press: Coverage around the Mumbai launch
- Mumbai Launch: Chief guest, acclaimed playwright Mahesh Dattani
- Crossword Kemps Corner
- 23rd May 2007, Wednesday, 7PM.
- Bestseller Listings:
- #9 in India Today's nationwide fiction list. Issue dated 14th May 2007.
- #2 in The Hindu's Metro Plus fiction top 5, dated 3rd May 2007.
- Blog: Jabberwock reviews Above Average and does a Q & A with Amitabha here. 2nd May 2007.
- Bestseller Listings: 28th April 2007. #2 in The Asian Age's Top 10 Indian Fiction list.
- Reading(s): Amitabha will participate in two sessions at the Mussoorie Writers Festival
- Reading from Above Average. Friday, 27th April 2007, 10:45 AM, Vera Marley Library, Woodstock School.
- Blog: Omair Ahmed writes about the launch on Satyabrat's blog. 10th April 2007.
There is a craftsmanship to his writing and he savours the words and the feelings that they evoke. He reads in a comfortable, slightly wistful tone, with a trace of longing for a passage into manhood that he is still exploring, full of half-understood hurts and delights. He is completely at home with his writing, a writer who has found a small place of his own and upon which he will hopefully build with other works.
Read the complete blog entry here.
- Press: The Hindu's Metro Plus supplement dated 9th April 2007 carried an article by Nandini Nair who attended the launch and talked to Amitabha later.
... the novel is not a chauvinistic anthem. In fact, this book serves as a critique of the IIT's triumphalism. "This is my contribution back," he explains, "to critique something I love and know." He explains, "It's a critique of the pressures middle class families put on their children to perform. People should try to be the best they can instead of trying to be on the top."
Read the whole article here.
- Bestseller Listings: 6th April 2007
- #3 at Crossword Book stores.
- #2 in The Hindu's Metro Plus for Visakhapatnam and Hyderabad.
- Press: Anuradha Verma of Today attended the launch and wrote a piece about it in the issue dated 5th April 2007.
At the launch ... some complained that female characters either figured as objects to be leered at, again and again, by IITians or as desexualised girlfriends. Bagchi, though, decides to take the criticism head on. "I don't know much about women yet," he says. "In the coming years, I plan to change that."
- Press: Indian Express' Delhi Newsline dated 4th April 2007 has carried an article based on an interview Vandana Kalra conducted with Amitabha.
Written with panache, the story, set in the early 1990s, describes the cityscape and experiences that a Delhiite can relate to: Chatterjee's regular visits to Shankar Market; the rush for entry passes to the film festival at Siri Fort Auditorium and family outings to the Rose Garden. "I'd like to look at it as a story based in Delhi rather than in IIT," he says.
Clicke here to read the entire piece.
- Launch: featuring a reading by Amitabha accompanied by Pankaj Awasthi on vocals and guitar followed by a panel discussion with Prof Shormistha Panja, Prof Amrit Srinivasan and Amitabha in conversation with Antara Dev Sen of The Little Magazine.
- Date: 3rd April 2007, 7PM
- Venue: IIC Annexe lawns.
- Bestseller listings: 25th March 2007.
- #3 on Financial Express's Fiction Top 10.
- #2 on The Hindu's Metro Plus Visakhapatnam's Fiction Top 5.
- Bestseller listings: #4 on Metro Now's Fiction Top 5, 20th March 2007.
- Press: A Q&A I did with Jai Arjun Singh has appeared in the Sunday Business Standard dated 18th March 2007. Click here to read it.
- Press: Mint talks about Above Average in their issue dated 17th March 2007:
... Bagchi has a rationale [for the IIT/IIM author phenomenon]: "People from IIT are telling these stories because being in these institutes makes them what they are."
- Bestseller listings: 13th March 2007.
- Panel: IIT Delhi's Board of Student Publications' is hosting a panel discussion as part of their annual fest Literati '07: IITian authors and their perspectives on IIT. The participants will be Prof Shashi Gulati, Sandipan Deb, Tushar Raheja and Amitabha Bagchi. Amitabha will moderate the discussion.
- Date: 6th March 2007. 6PM.
- Venue: Seminar Hall, IIT Delhi.
- Press: India Today has profiled Amitabha in their column Authorspeak. 12th March 2007.
Shortly after the celebration of the four thousandth anniversary of the opening of space, Angary J. Gustible discovered Gustible's planet. The discovery turned out to be a tragic mistake.
Gustible's planet was inhabited by highly intelligent life forms. They had moderate telepathic powers. They immediately mind-read Angary J. Gustible's entire mind and life history, and embarrassed him very deeply by making up an opera concerning his
recent divorce.
- Book: My friend Deeptha Khanna has written an engaging story of growing up as a teenage girl in Delhi in the early nineties. Check out The Year I Turned 16.
- Festival: Amitabha will participate in the Mussoorie Writers Festival being held in Mussoorie between Apr 24th and Apr 28th 2007. The program of the festival, once it's announced, will be available here
Amitabha’s reading was quite entertaining as he got completely into character with each of the…uh, characters that came up in the reading.
- Festival: Amitabha will read his story Arachnophilia published by Caferati as part of the Stories at the Coffee Table volume at the Caferati session of the Jaipur Lit Fest 2007.
- Date: 21st Jan 2007, 6PM.
- Venue: Hotel Diggi Palace, Jaipur.
The city forms and reforms itself. Hoardings come down, flyovers go up. And we continue to look out on it, to recount the stories of our lives through what we see, and remember how we felt when what is gone was still there.
There is a tenderness to [Bagchi's] overview of the city, too, a melancholy which takes its residence in the prose and not--as too often in talk about Delhi--in over-stated claims about the city's decline.
Test cricket is lovely because it happens in whites. A game that doesn’t allow competing teams to differentiate themselves with contrasting uniforms is a game with a developed aesthetic, one that values its ‘look’ enough to refuse the short-term temptations of colour.
- Press: Above Average is mentioned in the Hindustan Times Sunday supplement Brunch, as one of the books to watch out for in 2007. 31st Dec 2006.
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