Recently someone whom I respect gave me a book to read. It is called Falcon Hill and the Book of Elista. Tarun George Thomas the author began writing it at age 11 and completed it when he was all of 12 years old. It is a fantasy book. The heroes are high school boys, led by Falcon Hill, kids with supernatural powers sent on a dangerous quest. The action occurs on earth, in California, New York and other such places, and a parallel universe called Elista. There is a war involving, among other things, “H-bombs, A-bombs and F-bombs (Freak bombs that cause vast devastation by sending out waves of pure terror—paralysing foes”). There is a hamburger-eating dragon, a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a giant spider, a giant bull frog, skeletons that come out of the earth, shape-changers, pterodactyl, an invisible monster and other fearsome monsters of various shapes and sizes which are all part of a frenzied action. There is magic healing and plenty of swordplay as well as portals and telekinesis.
I will not be giving anything away by saying many unpredictable villainous things crumble into grey dust at an unnerving frequency. Tarun George deserves to be applauded, not only because he is so young: In my job, I get applications from many who are barely able to string an English sentence together even though they have been to good colleges and are a good deal older. And Tarun’s book is 383 pages. The book has another monster as well—the printer’s devil popping up occasionally, but that is predictable in our publishing industry even in non-fantasy titles. I can vouch for that. I do wish sometimes that I had a magic sword that would kill the printer’s devil once and for all but I know that could happen only in a fantasy world. Not in the world I live in.
I am not much of a fantasy book reader. I leave that to my daughter who is in high school. I take my fantasy these days only in celluloid form in large screen format. I read J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in college or thereabouts; my daughter read it in Class VII, once she had finished young Christopher Paolini’s Eragon. That is what the world is coming to. But reading Tarun’s busy book got me thinking. Children these days are getting published early. There is a girl in my daughter’s school, one year her junior, in Class IX, who had written a book the previous year and had been published by a Kolkata publisher. My exposure to children’s writing is mostly limited to The Diary of Anne Frank, which also I read while in college, and not because it was a children’s book, although Anne was 13 when she began to keep the diary. I am told Walter Farley wrote The Black Stallion while he was in high school. Mary Shelley was still in her teens when she wrote Frankenstein. The last three have endured; and Tolkien, an English professor in Oxford was 45 when The Hobbit was published 76 years ago.
By publishing Falcon Hill, Manorama Books is venturing into uncharted territory, and during the downturn in publishing. And it is not easy to find publishers. Ask me. But I see only good things coming out of this. I hope it opens the doors to other Taruns who nurture books inside them.
(Sudarshan is most recently author of Adrift. sudarshan@newindianexpress.com)