*PRESS RELEASE*
The novelist Chandrahas Choudhury will give a talk called *"Ten Ways In Which Novels Can Change Your Life"* at 6.30 pm on Friday, the 30th of March, at the *Gallery Gitanjali <http://www.gallerygitanjali.com/>, Fontainhas, Panjim. *The event will be the third in the gallery's series of literary events called *Between The Lines.* * * Choudhury is the author of the novel *Arzee the Dwarf* (HarperCollins, 2009), which was shortlisted for the 2010 Commonwealth First Book Award. He is also the Fiction & Poetry editor of the magazine of politics and the arts *The Caravan <http://www.caravanmagazine.in/>*, and reviews Indian fiction for the *New York Times *(where he recently wrote about Amitav Ghosh's *River of Smoke*<http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/river-of-smoke-by-amitav-ghosh-book-review.html>, the subject of the first two *Between The Lines*events) and other newspapers. In keeping with the spirit of a city that is home to influences from all around the globe, Choudhury will flesh out his arguments about what novels can give us with examples from novels around the world. A more detailed note about the talk is provided below. * Ten Ways In Which Novels Can Change Your Life* Chandrahas Choudhury argues that novels, more than any other form of writing, offer a complete education in all the arts of the human self and the problems of human society. How so? By reading novels, we are, through all the means and maneuvers of storytelling, given a contemplative education in the range and depth of human choice and human perspectives, and a vantage point on the human mind as it sparks and leaps through thought.The narrative structures of novels allow us to contemplate all the pleasures and problems of the human experience of time. By offering us language worked up to the most subtle and complex meanings and vivid and musical sounds of which it is capable, novels teach us to cherish language, showing us how better language leads to better thought. By showing us the ways in which memory works in human beings, and how human decisions are always contingent on particular constellations of circumstances as much as on overriding beliefs and principles, novels allow us to develop a more rewarding understanding of time. Novels demonstrate to us how doubt is just as useful a human virtue as certainty, and that the good life must respect both rationality and passion. By tracking experiences that lie behind closed doors or within human minds, they instill in us an awareness of the importance of the private life of individuals to the health of society. And by never offering any explicit advice (unlike self-help books), novels in fact offer the best kind of support to readers -- the confidence that trusts the adult reader to make up his or her mind after considering all the evidence. The wisdom of the novel is not the wisdom of answers, but that of questions. Choudhury will make his points with concrete examples from novels by a wide range of writers, including Orhan Pamuk, Irene Nemirovsky, UR Ananthamurthy, Chekhov, Ashwaghosha and David Mitchell. -- Thanks & Regards Miriam Koshy Gallery Gitanjali E-212,31st January Road, Fontainhas,Panjim, Goa-403001 India www.gallerygitanjali.com 00919823572035 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Protect Goa's natural beauty Support Goa's first Tiger Reserve Sign the petition at: http://www.goanet.org/petition/petition.php ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
