We are about to celebrate the publication of the paperback version of Mumbai Fables by Gyan Prakash, so the timing of this interview with The Times of India is particularly good.

Prakash’s thoughts on tabloid journalism (particularly of the Indian tabloid Blitz):

Journalists often act as ethnographers, digging under surface reality to decode the urban labyrinth. Tabloids take this to another level. With their screaming headlines, shocking stories and photographs, they present the city as a place of sensations.

Prakash on why his history of Mumbai is written as a series of distinct chapters that illuminate parts of the city’s history:

Mumbai had been on my mind since childhood as a figure of imagination…I was moved by its images, the stories the city told about itself and others narrated about its rise from seven islets to a single island city…As a historian, i wanted to understand where these stories came from.

Read the complete article here: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-09-02/edit-page/30101735_1_bambai-politics-tabloid

If you’ve been wondering about Mumbai Fables‘ evocative cover, it was recently featured in The Huffington Post‘s “25 Outstanding Book Covers of 2010.” Carmina Alvarez-Gaffin, one of the designers at Princeton University Press, was quoted in the article describing how she and author Gyan Prakash worked in tandem to create a design for the book’s jacket:

The image that we ultimately used for the cover of Mumbai Fables is a painting titled “Bombay Buccaneer” by Atul Dodiya, and was brought to us by the author, Gyan Prakash. He loved the image and felt that the image truly captured the essence of his book. Though the book is nonfiction, it is very novelistic in feel, and conjures up the images of Bollywood cinema and the graphic novels of Bombay . Gyan Prakash felt strongly about using a fresh and modern image — not an image traditionally associated with Bombay–but something that would capture the Mumbai of today.

To view the rest of the article, click here. For more information and news related to Mumbai Fables, check out the Facebook page – if you “like” the page, you’ll receive notice of updates!

Continued »

Gyan Prakash has written a fascinating cultural history of Mumbai that Princeton is pleased to be publishing this month. Called MUMBAI FABLES, the book has a novelistic feel and leads readers through the tumultuous history of the global metropolis. Interestingly–at least for a book published by a university press–the book is also the basis for a movie to be produced in India and released internationally called Bombay Velvet. Check out this story in IBN Movies to see what the director Anurag Kashyap says about the movie.

The book, perhaps not surprisingly, has received many reviews in India. In the Daily News & Analysis, Anita Vachharajani writes, “Most people who live in Mumbai feel a peculiar sort of love for it. Many things are wrong with this dystopian, poorly-planned city, but most of us probably couldn’t bear to live elsewhere. If, like me, you feel this mix of emotions, then you’re going to love Gyan Prakash’s Mumbai Fables.”
And Professor Prakash was quoted in a recent New York Times article by Jim Yardley about the amazing new home (soaring palace may be more apt) of Mukesh Ambani.

We’re launching our Fall 2010 list this week with our sales conference. We invite you to be the first to checkout our new catalog online. http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/F10trade.html Also available in PDF format: http://press.princeton.edu/catalogs/F10Seasonal.pdf