Column | Kanishka Gupta’s open door policy

Kanishka Gupta, 43, is likely the most popular book agent in the country right now. One strategy that has helped him go from being an outsider who “didn’t know the ABC of agenting” — and someone whom publishers fobbed off by saying they didn’t pay author advances — to an industry insider who runs the largest literary agency in South Asia, is that he always keeps his doors open.

“I don’t say, tune mujhe kitab nahi di, katti (You didn’t give me your book, so I won’t speak to you),” he says. He once helped a journalist-author conduct an auction for her book despite the fact that she didn’t want him to be her agent. In turn, she introduced him to many writers. In an insulated and competitive field, Gupta’s open door policy is rare.

Now he’s the agent for feminist lawyer Indira Jaising’s conversational biography with Ritu Menon; says he can tell if ChatGPT is the real author of a piece of writing by the overuse of words such as ‘tapestry’ and ‘align’; and promises to send me an award-winning book published in 2019 that he’s re-pitching for publication in the U.K. and the U.S. because he has “never read a book like this”. He’s talking about Numair Atif Choudhury’s Babu Bangladesh!. Choudhury died in a freak drowning accident in Japan a year before his book was released.

He may not yet have discovered an Arundhati Roy in his slush pile, like literary agent David Godwin once did, but Gupta now has an author roster that includes two International Booker winners in four years. He is the agent for Banu Mushtaq’s Heart Lamp (translated by Deepa Bhasthi), which recently bested around 150 entries to win the prestigious prize. He was also translator Daisy Rockwell’s agent when she and author Geetanjali Shree won the 2022 International Booker for Tomb of Sand.

Agent ‘by accident’

Gupta was also representing two books of Shehan Karunatilaka when the Sri Lankan writer won the 2022 Booker Prize (Gupta got a shoutout in the victory speech alongside Godwin). His author Avni Doshi’s Burnt Sugar was shortlisted for the Booker in 2020. Gupta says he’s been the agent for around 1,700-1,800 published books so far.

As Heart Lamp propels bookstore sales across the country, Gupta has been inundated with translation offers. “…Malay, Sinhala, Portuguese, Greek, Italian, Arabic… a Georgian publisher is interested, the Polish book is a big deal,” he rattles off at 2x speed, adding that he has also received invites from 30 literature festivals.

Gupta became an agent “by accident”. In school he had “zero interest” in books. As a teenager, he suffered from “life-threatening depression” and a few years after, he began writing a book. Somehow, due to regular visits to Delhi book shops, he developed an interest in publishing. “I kept observing and Googling,” he says.

His own book was rejected by publishers at first because it was overwritten. But in classic Gupta style, he worked on his own writing, read voraciously and made it to the longlist of the now discontinued Man Asian Literary Prize. At 21, he was that pesky author who would email agents repeatedly (he still has half-a-dozen manuscripts, “one worse than the other”).

The people connect

He had two short stints working with literary stalwarts Namita Gokhale and Mita Kapur and, in 2008, he started Writer’s Side to give authors editorial feedback. Two years later, when he signed on his first client, Anees Salim, then an unknown author, Gupta became a literary agent.

“There was a lot of opposition, confusion, uncertainty from the publishing industry,” he says about the early years. “I had no credentials, some were not keen on working with me, but I always stayed in touch with people and that worked for me.”

When his business thrived, Gupta began sharing his observations about the publishing industry. “I’m blunt, so I’m disliked. Once I felt I was in a position to speak my mind, I started doing that,” he says. “I called out the nepotism and casteism in publishing.” One of his pet peeves is that many talented authors are forced to publish paperback books while the hardbacks seem to be reserved for the prestige memoirs of bureaucrats.

The breadth of Gupta’s author list is impressive. “I’m known for my translation list,” he says. “It’s big.” But then he has also been the agent for at least 50 Pakistani authors. He has a long list of nature writing, sports books, Dalit writers and academics-turned-authors. “I’m open to everything,” he says.

After 7-8 years of wading through the slush pile to discover writers, Gupta now has the luxury to operate from references and his travels. He represented Pakistani author Moni Mohsin after meeting her at the Galle Literature Festival in Sri Lanka and signed up writer and naturalist Yuvan Aves after they connected at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

He was the agent for the book, Trial By Fire, about the Uphaar cinema tragedy, and Life after MH370, written by a man who lost his wife on the plane. “I get drawn to personal stories,” Gupta says. His personal story is not bad either.

The writer is a Bengaluru-based journalist and the co-founder of India Love Project on Instagram.