BHUBANESWAR: Bestselling author Novoneel Chakraborty, renowned for his dark romantic thrillers, on Sunday said the erotic genre is not suited for India.
Interacting with author and consulting editor of The Sunday Standard Ravi Shankar, the author, also known as the Sidney Sheldon of India, said Indian readers love romantic thrillers and erotic themes are viewed differently. Indian authors who take to erotic thrillers are placed in a different category and not taken seriously.
“In the West, most of the erotic thriller writers are women but same is not the case in India where authors brave enough to take up the genre are labelled differently,” he said.
Novoneel has authored just one erotic thriller ‘Black Suits You’ and has since stuck to the genre of romantic thriller. The writer, whose books have been adapted to crime series on several OTT platforms, said every human being has a criminal instinct in him/her and he just brings them to light with his stories which are dark.
“There is something about the dark that people are eager to know about. I love human psychology and how people react to different situations,” he said.
It is not that Novoneel just sticks to hardcore crime. He has also written a light thriller that was received well. The author said his first few books were adapted to series on OTT platform. “I am now scared of adaptations. People who make TV series or movies from books are egoistic and seldom stick to the original story,” he said.
The young writer said his publishers want him to write romantic thrillers as they are immensely popular in India. “Indians love romance as everyone’s heart is broken,” he observed.
Describing the world of readers and authors and the relationship between the two, Novoneel said when a reader opens his book, he or she has to be sucked into his world. “When people pay Rs 200-Rs 300 for my book, I have to take them on a journey in which they enter a different world.”
Novoneel is young and so is the majority of his audience. He said, writing is a lonely job and meeting people to understand them and their stories makes the job easier. Stories need characters and there is no fixed formula for an author to connect with the readers. The author feels more women should come forward and write crime thrillers in India.