Writer’sBlock
Ghalib Shiraz Dhalla is an author and filmmaker whose novels include Ode to Lata and The Exiles, which is a tale of love and loss set in Kenya, India and Los Angeles. He has just completed writing and directing Embrace, a dramatisation of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.
QWhich is your favourite reading spot?
My bed, before dozing off.QWhich books are you reading at present?
Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (translated by Pevear and Volokhonsky), Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra and the spiritual teachings of Ernest Holmes.QWho are your favourite Indian writers?
I adulate Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who writes about India better than anyone I know.QWho are your favourite novelists?
Andrew Holleran, whom I had the chance of meeting a couple of years ago, and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala.QWhich are your favourite children’s books?
It’s been a while, but I remember being addicted to the Amar Chitra Katha series even when I was a child in Kenya — the plump Dashaavatar issue was my favourite.QWhich is the most over-rated book?
I’m not touching this question... catch me when I’ve had a martini and it might come spilling out.QWhich is the most under-rated book?
My colleague Bhargavi C. Mandava’s intricate novel, Where the Oceans Meet.QWhich classics do you want to read?
Classic Russian novelists, including Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and the Greek epics by Homer.QWho is your favourite literary character?
The only time I ever dreamt of characters from a novel, people I had never actually met in real life but who nevertheless took on corporeal form in my dreams, was when I read Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. I consider this one of the finest novels ever written and its cast burrowed deep into my psyche.QWhich book changed your life?
Can’t point to just one book that has made a singular impact because everything we read contributes in some way, but the teachings of Science of the Mind founder, Ernest Holmes, and Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha have had a huge impact. The writing of LGBT lit icon, Andrew Holleran, especially his novels The Beauty of Men and Dancer from the Dance, inspired me to write and have always shattered any writer’s block.
