Summer is usually the silly season for book launches in India--it's way too hot to go out and sweatily applaud some writer guy--but there's a big one planned for June, when Aniruddha Bahal comes out with his debut novel. Bahal is better known as the man who ran Operation Westend, and he can take credit for breaking the cricket match-fixing story in India as well.

The man's an undercover writer in more ways than one, if you take a peek at the book cover for Bunker 13 that's on the Faber website. (The design puts me in mind of this passage from Julia Blackburn's Old Man Goya: "At the age of fourteen Goya was sent to study drawing under the guidance of a man who was employed by the Inquisition as their Reviewer of Dishonest Paintings, which meant his job was to conceal human nakedness in the work of the Old Masters, using a carefully added swirl of cloth, a shadow or the floating presence of a leaf.") Good little Indians worried that Bahal's about to "go against our ancient Indian culture" (the censor's catchphrase of choice) needn't worry: Faber has shrewdly designed quite a different jacket for the Indian edition.