At the height of his popularity, the first edition of his books sold five lakh copies. He himself waas nominated for the Filmfare award for Best Story 6 times in a career spanning roughly 20 years. Yet, if I walk up to the average person on the street today and ask them if they knew who Gulshan Nanda is, I would in all probability draw a blank stare.
I am usually cautiously optimistic any time I pick up a book by an author I have never read before. Many times, an author’s style is just not your thing, even if the author themselves might be competent, even gifted writers, So, I approached Sushma Kasbekar’s Murder At The Club with the same caution. However, having devoured the short 200 page book in a single sitting late on a Saturday night, I feel that my caution was premature and thoroughly unnecessary.
Westland, and now Harper Collins has Amish Tripathi’s Shiva and Rama series. To make matters worse Harper also has Ashvin Sanghi’s books on their catalogue now. These two writers put together possibly outsell majority of the industry combined. Now Penguin does have romance writers like Durjoy Dutta and Ravinder Singh on its catalogue, but they don’t have a marquee fantasy series. So, in order to find their own franchise, Penguin has turned to Akshat Gupta’s Hidden Hindu trilogy.