Sudeep Nagarkar’s debut novel, back in 2011, Few Things Left Unsaid, became a bestseller. Many readers, especially youths, have read the novel and rated it favourably, giving the novelist impetus to continue writing. Sudeep, who is also an engineer by profession, has produced about 10 novels after that and most of them have done very well among the readers who are teenagers, youths and students. So, what is special about Few Things Left Unsaid? Why did the readers like it a lot? What makes the novelist very popular? I will try to write an opinion article on this subject. I hope the readers will like what they read ahead.
I am not against any culture in Indian English literature. Literature is an even playground and the Indian authors have their right to do what they like, in whatever way, unless it becomes too much in any direction. With the rise of authors like Chetan and Nikita Singh, the readers have plenty of options available almost in every genre except literary fiction. The authors like Sudeep Nagarkar and Durjoy Datta are the results of this wave that Chetan started with his simple, plainly written fiction which took the reading society by storm. Youths like Sudeep’s books because he offers the readers what they want – cheap entertainment in a very simplified language without the necessity of wrestling with the flux of thoughts that literary fiction writers create.
What’s in Few Things Left Unsaid? There is a guy who falls in love with a girl and takes time before realising that they should be together rather than making it a short-term fall-in fall-out relationship. The entire set-up is weaved around campus life. Why young readers will not like it? They will very much like it because they can fancy themselves in the places of respective characters and it eases their leisure to a further level…
However, there is one thing that the readers of serious fiction will have to admit. If a student of English literature reads the novels by Durjoy or Sudeep, things will be very difficult for them when they transition over the works by Hardy or Austen or even Lodge. This will be difficult because the difference in the levels of seriousness is immense which very few Indian authors can match today. Matching would be a difficult word to use because it’s purely subjective how does a reader or a writer perceive the seriousness of a work of literature. Still, one can admit without very much hesitation that the works of Sudeep Nagarkar do not have depth and he merely writes to keep his reader base entertained and this is what he needs to do because he knows that his reader base is comprised of readers who want to be entertained by literature. There is no harm giving them what they want!
This novel, Few Things Left Unsaid, is ideal for the readers who are teenagers, college students or newly fallen in love. They will like the phases of life that these characters go through. You can get the Kindle edition of the novel and know more about it by clicking the link below: