Vishal Arora / sify
New Delhi, Dec 20: Even as India is gearing for the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas 2007, aimed at bringing the expertise and knowledge of the Indian overseas community to India and integrating it into country's development process, the twin teenage novelists of Indian origin, Suresh Guptara and Jyoti Guptara, have launched their debut fantasy novel Conspiracy of Calaspia.
The Guptara brothers completed the first draft of the novel when they were barely 11 years old. For the following six years, they revised and rewrote it to produce a multi-layered novel of whopping 180,000 words.
While Suresh is studying in school, Jyoti is probably the youngest full-time writer in the world. Jyoti also became the youngest known writer to have an article published in The Wall Street Journal at the age of 15. The twins live in Switzerland.
Conspiracy of Calaspia is the first in a seven-volume series titled The Insanity Saga.
The novel, which was published in the UK and Switzerland on November 21 - a day before the twins turned 18, has become the English-language bestseller in Switzerland and on book portals like Bagchee and Amazon.
Suresh told Sify.com that The Insanity Saga was primarily about a cast of heroes great and small pitted against the powers of Insanity, a corrupting force both internal and cosmically external. "We play a lot with appearance and reality, surface and substance. A 'good' character often ends up having to fight himself by turning into his own bane," he added.
When asked how they conceived the idea of writing a novel at such a tender age, Jyoti said they used to tell stories to each other and later write them down. Gradually, they decided to write a full-fledged novel.
The twins said they were inspired by authors like George MacDonald, C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien.
Jyoti and Suresh were born to an Indian father and English mother in England. Their father Prabhu Guptara is former professor of the North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong and an acclaimed literary figure in the UK and Switzerland.
The book-launch function, attended by foreign and Indian dignitaries, including Chief Minister of Delhi Sheila Dikshit and the editor of Tehelka, Tarun Tejpal, was held at in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Sheila Dikshit said she had a copy of the novel kept on her desk, but some school children who visited her borrowed it from her. "But I haven't got it back. And one of the reasons why I haven't got it back is that it is doing the rounds. This means it's a wonderfully attractive book," she said.