Sidney Sheldon - a great storyteller.

My first reaction was ‘oh **** !!’ after seeing newspaper headline on Bangkok- Mumbai flight. My fellow passenger was taken a back by my reaction and when explained about passing away of Sidney Sheldon, he was amused. I could make out that – being a businessman he may not have had opportunity to know this novelist. But for me, this man, shaped my interest in English books by demonstrating the art of articulating emotions through words in racy, spellbound storytelling. If Harold Robbins helped me take first steps of English fiction, Sidney Sheldon was my companion during growing up years. Others like Irwin Wallace, Arther Hailey and Fredrick Forsyth followed but no one like Sidney Sheldon carved such a big influence on me with If Tomorrow Comes, Master of the Game, Rage of Angels, Bloodline, A Stranger in the Mirror, and The Other Side of Midnight. And all this from an author who started writing novels from the age of 50.

He may have been in the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of languages into which his novels were translated and with more than 300m copies were printed. But biggest tribute for him must have been from India where someone would write and print novels on his name and they would be sold in thousands at railway stations. When he came to India and saw those novels never written by him and sold in bookshops, he was overwhelmed. He even conceded that those weren’t all that bad. He definitely knew the pulse of readers something which soap serial makers have nicely imitated. End chapter with tremendous impact but make people keep guessing what would be next chapter.

Sidney Sheldon ….You will be dearly missed.

Comments

Anonymous said…
wanted to say that yesterday I noticed a quote on your site by Edgar Allan Poe, it was the first stanza within the poem "A Dream Within A Dream", but that poem makes you think and I just had to post it on my site. Thanks for the little bit of inspiration!
2:17 PM

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