30 January 2018
Some of Scotland’s finest crime writers are set to bring a slice of tartan noir to India. Val McDermid, Graeme Macrae Burnet and Abir Mukherjee will be championing contemporary Scottish crime fiction at the Kolkata Literary Festival, held inside the International Kolkata Book Fair.
The writers will be in Kolkata from 7-14 February and tweeting with the hastag #CrimeinKolkata.
They will launch Bloody Scotland, a thrilling anthology of dark Scottish tales, published for the first time in India and at a special price to hook the Indian market. The anthology features 12 stories from a stellar cast of Scottish writing talent, including Lin Anderson, Ann Cleeves and Denise Mina.
The activities are part of a project supported by the British Council to help Bloody Scotland, Scotland’s international crime writing festival, reach international audiences and grow the global reach of Scotland’s celebrated crime writing scene. The visit is the culmination of a partnership between Bloody Scotland, BEE Books, and Publishers and Booksellers Guild, which aims to make popular Scottish crime titles available to readers in India at a competitive price.
The roots of the partnership go back to 2016, when publisher Esha Chatterjee visited Scotland as part of the Momentum programme. Scottish authors Lin Anderson, Doug Johnstone, along with Bloody Scotland chair and literary agent Jenny Brown were in turn invited to Kolkata in 2017 to explore new opportunities for exchange between the writing scenes of both countries. Supported by the British Council and Creative Scotland, their visit was instrumental in enabling the Bloody Scotland project, and the Indian crime writer Monabi Mitra took part in the 2017 Bloody Scotland festival.
The project has also seen the creation of The Digital Writers' Lab , an online platform connecting writers from both countries, where they have shared secrets on their approach to story-telling. Scottish writers featured so far include Mark Leggatt and Doug Johnstone.