Penguin Books India and Taj Mahal Mumbai hosted an evening to launch Shobhaa De’s new book Superstar India: From Incredible to Unstoppable on the 29th of April. Superstar India is a big book, one of the biggest this year. Suhel Seth did a reading from the book followed by a engaging, intense yet fun discussion between Shobhaa De and Vir Sanghvi. Amitabh Bachchan rendered an articulate and perfectly pitched speech to launch the book .
Some of the celebrities who attended the book launch were John Makinson, Chairman Penguin, Praful Patel, Tina Ambani, Rashmi Thackeray, Nana & Munira Chudasama, Javed Ahmed, Tasneem Mehta, AN & Mona Roy, Avanti Birla, Hasina Jethmalani, Bijal Meswani, Smita Parekh, Alex & Namita Kuruville, Indu Shahani, Queenie Dhody, Hema Deora, Shaina NC, Anil Chopra, Bakul Jain, Swati Piramal , Champa & Chakor Doshi etc. Guests had their copies signed by Shobhaa De to commemorate the occassion.
SUPERSTAR INDIA
From Incredible to Unstoppable
SHOBHAA DÉ
There could have been no better person than Shobhaa Dé to pen the account of the incredible journey of independent India. In the sixtieth year of India’s independence, this best-selling author, social commentator, and as she puts it herself, ‘cheerleader of independent India’ turns sixty as well. Superstar India mirrors her own life, just as it tells the story of what our nation is all about in a way that has never been told before.
It all began when, viewing the breathless planning of celebrations for free India’s 60th birth anniversary, and poised on her own—unbelievably—sixth decade, it struck Dé: ‘Surely my life has taken the same trajectory as the country’s?’
Does India really deserve to congratulate itself? Has it lived up to the early promises it made its people? Does Dé herself believe in India?
In a departure from anything else she has written, she lasers in on people and their places in the larger human society, India’s past, present and future generations, its historical failings and equally historical glory. Analyzing where Indians go wrong (particularly in relation to foreigners and their countries), she nevertheless finds reason to accord the nation ‘superstar’ status, and with humorous argumentativeness, convinces the reader completely on that point.
Journalism comes to the fore once again in the writing career of this best-selling author as she proves, one by one, that for every truism about India, the opposite is also true.
In the long tradition of non-fiction books on India, this is possibly the first contemporary take narrated in a distinctly female voice. It’s Everywoman’s version of India and change.
An obsessive-compulsive writer of fifteen books, Shobhaa Dè has spent the last three years in the pursuit of her first vocation, journalism. Her columns are ubiquitous, appearing in nearly every newspaper and magazine of note, and commenting with customary incisiveness on matters of politics, the economy, business and commerce, the heart and the hearth.
Best-selling author, jet-setting commentator and honest critic, she is most at home in Mumbai—a city which is also a recurring ‘character’ in much of her work—living there with her husband Dilip and (when they’re around) their six children.
India is hot. Seriously hot.
Superstar India tells you why.
