NY, Henry Holt, (1997). The advance reading copy of the suppressed first issue of the American edition of this compilation of 50 years of Indian writing, edited by Rushdie and Elizabeth West, and with an introduction and one piece by Rushdie. Other writers include Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry, Vikram Seth, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Amit Chaudhuri and Satyajit Ray, among many others. Reportedly no more than two or three copies of the first issue of the published book are extant, the rest having been destroyed. This advance reading copy contains a number of small points of interest: V.S. Naipaul's name is crossed out from the list of contributors; the title of Vikram Seth's piece is changed from "An Unsuitable Boy" to "A Suitable Boy"; there are a handful of changes to Rushdie's introduction, as well as perhaps two dozen or so changes indicated throughout the text. This collection was intended to showcase a number of young Indian writers who had gained great critical praise, as well as their forebears. The publishers decided, however, on seeing the final book that it was unacceptable, in terms of design and production, and scrapped the edition, later redoing it entirely. This volume is one of the only survivors of the aborted first American edition of this collection. Fine in wrappers. [#036448] $350