Richard Crasta, Author

Like R. K. Narayan, who wrote in "My Days" that if he could have told the story of his novel "The Guide" in a few sentences, he wouldn't have taken 90,000 words to do it, I find myself at a loss to answer a question such as, "What is your novel about?"--when the question is put to me by a new acquaintance regarding my novel "The Revised Kama Sutra." I wish to reply: "Almost anything and everything you can think of!" Or: "It would be easier to tell you what it is NOT about." (Or, to the equally difficult question: "What do you write about?": "The sex life of mosquitoes." "The love lives of Chlamydomonas.") Anyway, on a recent trip to the U.S., I uncovered a few of my old reviews, and one of these was this review of "The Revised Kama Sutra" by Shivaji Sengupta in "India Abroad," New York., and think it is one of the most intelligent and well-phrased answers to this questio...

The Amazon Kindle e-reader has arrived in Indian stores, and Amazon has opened its publishing platform to Indians. To celebrate this, I have reduced the Indian prices of some of my books to encourage my Indian readers to go ahead and get themselves a digital copy of my books. The Kindle platform presents one big advantage to an Indian independent writer: freedom of expression, and the ability to bypass gatekeepers and distributors and reach the reader instantly, without shipping or other costs. For this one reason alone, Indian independent writers who publish on the Kindle deserve the support of fellow Indians and others; for with its feudal traditions, cronyism, and corruption, India needs writers who write without fear of being muzzled or shut out by the Gatekeepers of Publishing and by the government. My books are at: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001ICH6H4 You can also download Kindle-friendly mobi files and epubs from here (the selection of books is a bit different): https://w...

From "The Face Magazine", UK: one of the over 60 reviews received by "The Revised Kama Sutra":   Still others may be read at: http://bit.ly/eFzXjn

Two reviews came to my attention recently: A review from a blogger/author ("Amazing book . . . finished it in one sitting."): http://www.winnowed.blogspot.in/2012/07/book-review-eaten-by-japanese-memoir-of.html And an older review by the erudite Professor of English Barry Fruchter, which was locked up in a storage facility in the New York region: please click on Page 1 and then Page 2 below. Exceptionally sensitive, detailed and sophisticated review:  Below is Page 2. Please click on the image below, and clicking on CTRL + until you zoom in to read the text,, however, I also provide a quote below this. Quotes from the review above: "More than any book in recent memory, Eaten by the Japanese  drives home the lasting effects of enforced captivity – not only on the bodies but also on the minds of the prisoners. It is almost totally devoid of xenophobia directed either at the Japanese enslavers or at the British imperial military masters in whose name t...

My widely published (though not TOO widely published) novel, The Revised Kama Sutra , has a new cover on Amazon Kindle, etc. Here it is: And here are the Dedication and Epigraphs, just to give you the sense in which the novel is a revision of the Kama Sutra: Dedication To the late Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, who taught me that it is permissible to laugh at the once sacred, and that the satirist’s religion is to have no sacred cows. To Saul Bellow, who taught me to love words brilliantly used, and whose lusty but brilliant male characters suggest a possible symbiosis between sex and intelligence. To the late Seymour Krim, a ballsy writer, for believing in me, and inspiring me to put my all into this novel. To Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin, for inspiring me with their honesty and courage to stand up for the Invisible Man. To the late Henry Miller, for introducing me to the laughter and joy of sex, while teaching me to despise and laugh at th...

The Empire Bites Back is my new collection of humor for those with an anti-colonialist spirit and who are looking for Politically Incorrect Humor from an Indian Writer partially colonized by the American Empire, and yet without having lost some capacity to bite back. It is also for those who are NOT interested in smartass answers from children with precociously adult language. My comic influences are wide-ranging, and include Mark Twain, British humorists such as Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Monty Python; the Marx Brothers, George Carlin and American standup comics, Punch, The New Yorker, and others. In it, I provide the complete "Death of a Minister"--my answer to every corrupt Indian politician from Lalu to Suresh Kalmady. I hope you like it. Here is the url: http://www.amazon.com/The-Empire-Bites-Back-ebook/dp/B00845OUNG

A few pages from the chapters SCOTT MEREDITH LITERARY AGENCY from my book THE KILLING OF AN AUTHOR. THE SCOTT MEREDITH LITERARY AGEN CY If there are thirty things about myself that I hate—and there are possibly more—then Number 23 is my discomfort with the law, a discomfort that makes me sweat or become self-conscious when a cop or a customs officer gives me the once-over or the twice-over (even though, nearly a hundred percent of the time, I have done nothing to be afraid of—don’t snort or smoke or booze or brawl or spit or pee on the pavement, and dreaming of making whoopee with the woman in front of me is not, as far as I know, a felony). So when, in May 1981, I graduated from my Master’s Degree program in Literature and Journalism at American University in Washington D.C.—my stepping stone to the Great American Writing Dream, along with a course in Book Editing at Harvard University’s summer school, taught by a senior Little, Brown editor with the help of Strunk & Wh...