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Dear reader,

Last month, Caribbean writer Jamir Nazir’s “The Serpent in the Grove,” published in Granta in partnership with the Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Prize, was widely suspected to have been written with the help of AI. It automatically created a firestorm in literary circles. Granta publisher Sigrid Rausing responded to the allegations saying, “It may be that the judges have now awarded a prize to an instance of AI plagiarism — we don’t yet know, and perhaps we never will know.” And that is where things stand. 

Many readers argued that the story was poorly written and wondered how it had won the prize. I, too, read the story — or at least tried to. It left me unimpressed, but also confused. In one place, Nazir writes, “A story is a well. It eats sound until somebody throws a rope. If grace is near and hands hold, something breathing comes up. Some stories pull buckets of bone. This one pulled a woman.”

I decided that this paragraph, like many others, was either too esoteric for my taste or just incoherent. But I didn’t dwell on it: after all, quality and taste are subjective. We have all had arguments, for instance, about whether a Booker winner truly deserved the prize, why certain deserving authors have been denied the Nobel Prize, and how some hugely popular works are, in fact, rather staid or run-of-the-mill. 

Indeed, taste is so personal that many others staunchly defend AI-generated stories. They argue that AI is a useful tool for non-writers who want to articulate their thoughts (but writing isn’t the only creative medium), for subject experts who aren’t exactly literary stalwarts (what are ghostwriters for?), and for non-English-speaking people to improve their writing skills (I believe this can only be done with more reading and writing). 

But even if we accept that literary taste is subjective, the AI debate raises a different question altogether: not whether a piece is good, but what kind of writing we value in the first place. My problem with AI writing — and I see how some journalists are also increasingly relying on it — is how polished and tidy it sounds, intent on wiping out all the imperfections and eccentricities that make us human. If purely human writing is like a waterfall, cascading down uneven rocks while catching the rays of sunlight, AI-generated writing is like a man-made fountain, with water flowing down smooth surfaces in a formulaic loop. It is a simulacrum of thought, glossy but without a heartbeat.

A great piece of creative writing is not just aesthetically pleasing; it is what stays with us, speaks to us, conveys the emotional depth of the characters, and relates the human experience as humans generally do. I realise the impact a good piece of writing has had on me when I am in awe (and also jealous) of what the writer has managed to pull off, cannot stop thinking about it, or want, desperately, to discuss it with other readers. 

Sample this passage that stayed with me for a long time.

It is from Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire: “Grief manifested itself in ways that felt like anything but grief; grief obliterated all feelings but grief; grief made a twin wear the same shirt for days on end to preserve the morning on which the dead were still living; grief made a twin peel stars off the ceiling and lie in bed with glowing points adhered to fingertips; grief was bad-tempered, grief was kind; grief saw nothing but itself, grief saw every speck of pain in the world; grief spread its wings large like an eagle, grief huddled small like a porcupine; grief needed company, grief craved solitude; grief wanted to remember, wanted to forget; grief raged, grief whimpered; grief made time compress and contract; grief tasted like hunger, felt like numbness, sounded like silence; grief tasted like bile, felt like blades, sounded like all the noise of the world. Grief was a shape-shifter, and invisible too; grief could be captured as reflection in a twin’s eye. Grief heard its death sentence the morning you both woke up and one was singing and the other caught the song.”

I read this many years ago, and then again during a period of grief and related all the more to it. The question is not whether AI can imitate such writing, but whether it can arrive at it in the same way as Shamsie did. And passages like these make the debate around AI writing feel more urgent than ever. If authorship, originality, and emotional truth are becoming harder to define, what exactly are we judging when we judge a piece of writing? 

This week’s essay is on precisely this vexed question. Karuna Ezira Parekh examines the dilemma many of us are grappling with in her essay here. And to know what various publishers, literary agents, and writers, such as Chiki Sarkar, Kanishkaa Gupta, and Aanchal Malhotra, have to say about this, see here.

Books of the week

In non-fiction, we have Aditya Mani Jha’s review of Tanul Thakur’s Wild Wild East: Exiled Americans, Enslaved Indians, and the Systemic Abuse of the H-1B Visa Programme (Context/Westland). Jha writes, “Through the lives of three men — Kumar Pandruvada, Virgil Bierschwale, and Manu Mitra — Thakur, a noted film critic and an H-1B worker himself in a previous life, expertly deconstructs the cruelty and the dehumanising doublespeak of a visa/immigration system designed to perpetuate modern-day slavery.” In the context of U.S. President Donald Trump’s crackdown on the H-1B visa programme, the book is timely, and also meticulously researched, says Jha here. And if you want to hear Thakur talk about his research, hear him in The Hindu‘s In Focus podcast with G. Sampath here. 

Rahul Akrekar, the founder of Indigo restaurant in Mumbai, is credited with introducing the concept of European fine-dining in India. In his book, Biting Off More Than I Can Chew (HarperCollins India), Akrekar provides an exhilarating memoir which works as a “ringside view for one of the most dynamic sectors of the Indian economy,” writes Sumana Mukherjee. She calls him a “gifted (if egoistic!) raconteur who wields the pen with as much fluidity and grace as he does the knife.” Read her review here.

Scottish botanist Henry Noltie’s Flora Indica: Recovering Lost Stories from Kew’s Indian Drawings (Roli Books) traces the forgotten histories behind thousands of botanical paintings created by Indian artists for the East India Company between 1790 and 1850. The book grew out of years of archival work, including the restoration of a 200-year-old botanical drawing that had been split in two. Through these artworks, Noltie highlights both India’s rich botanical diversity and the overlooked contributions of indigenous artists. Read Nidhi Gupta’s piece here.

In A Room in Bombay: A Memoir (HarperCollins India), novelist and mathematics professor Manil Suri writes about the 2,711 letters he exchanged with his mother between 1979, the time he moved to the U.S., and 2010, shortly before her “psychiatric hospitalisation”. The book’s central theme is entrapment, symbolised by the room in Bombay’s Razia Mansion to which Suri’s parents moved after living separately for 11 years. Saurabh Sharma speaks to Suri about the room that kept drawing him back to Bombay, the family’s dynamics, and about being queer in an era when Section 377 of the IPC prevailed, here.

In fiction, we have Chintan Girish Modi reviewing Farhad J. Dadyburjor’s Queerly Beloved (Penguin). Modi writes, “With the judiciary and legislature joining forces to delay legal recognition for same-sex marriage in India, there is a need for stories that sustain hope. Activism alone cannot fulfil that role; that’s where fiction comes in.” He says the stylish cover design matches the mood of a storyline that delivers some feel-good moments even if it lacks the erotic charge and emotional depth of The Other Man, a finalist at the Lambda Literary Awards 2022 in the ‘Gay Romance’ category.

We also have a tribute to Marjane Satrapi by Rachita Taneja, the creator of the Sanitary Panels webcomic. “In her work, Satrapi does more with less,” she writes. “The artwork is blunt and haunting [in Persepolis] — capturing exactly how a child might experience and remember violence. It is a masterclass in telling a dark story in an engaging and sometimes humorous way, without ever diminishing its cruelty.” Read the tribute here.

Spotlight

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, scheduled to release in July, features Matt Damon as Odysseus, Zendaya as Athena, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, Tom Holland as Telemachus, Charlize Theron as Calypso, and Lupita Nyong’O as Helen as well as her sister Clytemnestra. In this essay, Uma Mahadevan Dasgupta writes about how Odysseus’s long journey home from the Trojan war continues to captivate readers through its many translations and adaptations, including the translation by Emily Wilson, the retelling by Madeline Miller, and the novella by Margaret Atwood. Read the essay here.

Nightstand

I’m still reading Meena Kandasamy this week, dear reader. New discoveries await next week.

Reading matters

Bengaluru’s Book Brahma Foundation, along with the iconic Bookworm bookstore, has instituted a literary prize aimed at promoting and recognising translated works. The Book Brahma-Bookworm English Fiction of the Year Award will be presented to a work of fiction translated into English from any South Indian language, published between 2023 and 2025 in India or abroad. For more details, contact chapparike@bookbrahma.com; visit www.bookbrahmalitfest.com 

And that’s all from me. Do write to me with suggestions, comments, and feedback to radhika.s@thehindu.co.in. Have a happy reading week!