Yesterday, NY Times announced that novelist Jeffey Archer was dead at the age of 86. I would say the lead paragraph of the article (paywall $) is a fairly accurate summary of a prodigious vacillations in his life.
Jeffrey Archer, a best-selling British author, politician, philanthropist, athlete and one-time jailbird whose résumé seesawed between achievement and disgrace, and who inspired abiding public fascination with headline-grabbing accounts, both fictional and personal, of ambition, self-promotion, misbehavior and scandal, died on Monday at his home in London. He was 86.
Like people who truly enjoy writing, he wrote till his last days. His publisher’s announcement says “suddenly and peacefully at his home between writing sessions”. In fact, Archer’s latest novel “Adam and Eve” was about to be published next week. Jeffrey Archer, by most accounts, is not in the firmament of literary greats. (I imagine that he wouldn’t care). However, I would guess that he was probably the most widely among all the contemporary western authors in India.
In India, Charles Dickens is probably (more than Shakespeare) the most widely known British writer. At least one of his novels — most frequently, either Oliver Twist or A Tale of Two Cities — is invariably required reading for English in every high school in India mostly in some abridged version by Orient Longman.
While we are at it, did you know that Orient Longman is an Indian publishing house headquartered in Hyderabad, India. Currently known officially as Orient Blackswan Pvt. Ltd., it was originally founded as the India arm of the British publisher Longman Green in 1948, focusing on abridging and popularizing the pre-copyright (pre-1923) British works.
If you restricted yourself to contemporary popular authors (not based in India), I doubt any one else was as popular in India as Jeffrey Archer. Perhaps, Sidney Sheldon would be a distant second.
Due to the paucity of English reading during my high school years, I came to Jeffrey Archer only in college freshman year, through PS., who was my college roommate for the first month. Like me, he had arrived by a day-long train journey to Bombay (now Mumbai). For the train ride, PS. had bought at departing station the latest Jeffrey Archer book — a collection of short stories called A Twist in the Tale. All the short stories, as the name proclaims, had a surprise twist at the end. I was naively amazed that someone had spent a hundred rupees on the book just for a train ride, and even more amazed that he let me — then a stranger — have it and read it. I must admit that the book was pure fun.
I still remember one story, Check Mate, distinctly (not surprising for a teen, as you shall soon see), in which a dilettante, who presumes himself to a highly skilled chess player. He thinks women are generally dumb and even dumber at chess. He convinces a young lady at the park, into playing a high-stakes betting chess against him. Every round, the loser has to take off a piece of their clothing. So basically, it is strip poker on the chess board. Now, unlike poker, chess doesn’t have multiple rounds and a reveal. (I am struggling not to pun in this whole paragraph). So I don’t precisely remember when the articles of clothing came off in the games. They probably played multiple games which should have taken a really long time, to be really exciting. But, you don’t care about the details when you are a salacious reader of Jeffrey Archer.
Eventually when she is down to her underwear — presumably the final round — she is naturally hesitant. Sensing a victory, he ups the stakes enormously. Obviously, unbeknownst to the pompous dude — but pretty apparent to the reader who can see the promised “twist” — it is a long hustle. She accepts the huge cash offering, and then suddenly her demeanor changes entirely. Soon, she is playing Polgar sisters level chess moves and he is dumbstruck. She then delivers a beautiful checkmate that he doesn’t quite see coming. With that perfect coup-de-grace, she gracefully gets up, picks up the pile of cash that he has just lost, puts on her dress in non-chalance (in that order) and makes her way out.
Following that book, I devoured Archer’s other books in rapid succession borrowing from libraries. I preferred (and still prefer) his short stories and pulpy thrillers (Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less) over the sprawling novels (Kane and Abel). Eventually, I discovered Roald Dahl, who also had a similar English sensitivity and understated humor, but a bit more mystical (the Nordic trolls) and macabre to suit my taste.
But recalling those days, it is evident why Jeffrey Archer is so uniquely popular in India. For he is an unknown in America. Almost no one that I meet regularly in the US, has heard of him even though his work was about the US. There was a CBS soap opera based on his book, Kane and Abel. Honor among Thieves is very much set on the US post-Gulf War (the first one) anxieties. I don’t own a single copy of Archer’s books at my home library, even though I have a certain soft fondness for pulp fiction (Jo Nesbo, Lee Child,…), so I doubt my children have read any of his books.
One reason why Archer’s stories were so successful in literati in India was because his tales represented the archetypal Indian film scripts, with very little moral ambiguity — the rights and the wrongs were clear. Even there was ambiguity, it was clear on whose side the author stood. Characters were often wronged in unjust ways, and sought revenge. Just the right amount, up to the line. Not any more. Not any less. Swindlers met their comeuppance. The downtrodden, the underdog, and the unseeded all won against the machinations of the wildly successful power-brokers. With that consistent Dickensian perspectives in his books, I was surprised to learn in 2001, when he was being sentenced to prison, that he was a committed Thatcherite conservative and Tory. Of course, given the general cultural directions of the NRI community such political connection is not surprising. Post Teresa May absolutely rocking a saree in India, and post Rishi Sunak as PM, it is quite possible that conservatives in UK, more than Labor or LibDems, have embraced the idea of India as a Commonwealth still tethered to the British Raj.
Over the maturity of years compounded by grayness, I have learned that moral certitude and personal proclivities can be disjoint from one’s political affiliations. This has continued to inform my pedagogical values, that we treat people as individuals it is important to understand people and its important to let people be themselves.
Jeffrey Archer’s stories were remarkable in that complicated way. He was famous in India but never wrote much about India (and until much recently, not many Indian characters in his books). Like PG Wodehouse, he chose to write what he knows best about. His moralistic fables seemed to be dictated from his life — from his own ups-and-downs, political zenith and jail time, financial success and bankruptcy, fame and fortune, wins and losses. He realized early that much of his fandom in India — His books came out in India at the same time as London. He was a fixture at Jaipur Literary festival. He often quoted too-good-to-be-true story from one of his Mumbai trips in his interviews.
Archer had first-hand experience of how quickly pirated copies of his books could reach Indian streets.
Sitting in Mumbai’s notorious traffic during a visit, he spotted a young boy carrying a pile of books that included his latest release.
“Would you like the latest Jeffrey Archer?” the boy asked.
“I am the latest Jeffrey Archer,” the novelist replied.
Archer went on to retell the encounter for years, including in a diary for The Spectator in 2015.
In fact, Jeffrey Archer was so popular in India that Bollywood, in its storied tradition, just plagiarized his readily-packaged stories. His novel, Kain and Abel — a modern take on biblical sibling rivalry — was made into a humdrum movie called Khudgarz (1987). More recently, Archer was upset that a Bollywood adult rom-com Ladies vs. Ricky Bahl (2011) was wholesale stitched from Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less. I haven’t watched either of those films. I suppose, Archer was no match to the Bollywood “professionalism”.
Despite his checkered life, it is hard to deny the fact that Jeffrey Archer entertained and moved millions of Indian readers. That was his gift. With nearly 700 million smartphones in India and with almost all young adults on smartphones, I truly doubt that any other author will sell 50 million books again in India.