It's (Not) the Final Chapter!

HE'S ALWAYS BEEN BIG IN INDIA AND NOW, EVEN WITH HIS 'LAST NOVEL' UNDER WAY, BESTSELLING AUTHOR JEFFREY ARCHER STILL HAS A LOT TO SAY

- Deepali Dhingra

WITH OVER 300 MILLION COPIES SOLD IN 115 COUNTRIES IN 48 LANGUAGES, Jeffrey Archer holds the distinction of being one of the most popular authors in the world, India being one of his biggest markets.

Ask him why he thinks he has such a loyal readership in India and he remarks, “Leading authors ask me, ‘why are you so popular in India, Jeffrey?’ Well, you people are an aspirational, hard-working race. You all think you're Abel. You're all fighting to get to the top, which I admire so much.” Archer’s love for cricket probably helped too and he counts V.V.S. Laxman and Rahul Dravid among his fans. “Sunil Gavaskar is an old friend. The Nawab of Pataudi and I were at Oxford together and remained friends. Indeed, he once held a dinner in my honour in Delhi,” he recounts.

At 85 years of age, Archer is penning his final novel. He has done a couple of drafts so far and expects to finish it sometime before Christmas. The idea for the novel came to him six years ago when he was reading a speech by Adolf Hitler. “Then I read Winston Churchill's response to it and realised that WWII could have ended on September 15, 1941. Three books had been written about what happened that day, all by distinguished historians but no one had tackled the subject as a novel. It has been the biggest challenge of my life,” he says. He's not modest about it either. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done—even better than Kane and Abel!” Considering the 1979 novel is counted among the world’s top 100 bestselling books, that is a tall claim indeed.