The author of the bestseller Sniper’s Eye, Mainak Dhar, wears many hats. A self-described ‘cubicle dweller by day and writer by night’, he loves creating and sharing stories. His books that also includes Alice in Deadland series and 03:02 have been translated into Turkish, Vietnamese, Japanese, French, German and Portuguese, reaching millions of readers. Dhar recently released the audio version of Sniper’s Eye at Headfone, an audio platform for storytelling. Here, he talks about giving a multi-sensory experience to the readers and writing more stories. Excerpts:
What encouraged you to release an audio version of your book?
Pratham (The founder of Headfone) had reached out to my agent about wanting to do an audio drama adaptation of Sniper’s Eye. As I learned more about what he was trying to do with Headfone, I was interested in the opportunity to reach out to new audiences with the story, and I’m quite happy at how they’ve adapted the story into a very immersive and multi-sensory experience.
How has the experience been of the new medium?
The way Headfone has adapted this is through a pretty immersive audio drama without just one narrator, but using different voice talents for the characters, music and special effects. I found it to be much more immersive and interesting than just a simple narration like an audiobook, and I hope listeners enjoy it as well.
Tell us about Sniper's Eye.
Sniper’s Eye is a thriller about an Army Major who has been trying to put the demons of his past behind him and live an ordinary life in Mumbai. On a date with his girlfriend in a mall, the man in front of them is shot, and he is thrust into the middle of a terror attack, which brings to the open his past, puts him on a terror kill list, and puts him and his loved ones in danger. As he is sucked in deeper, he has to become the man he once was and confront his past. He also he learns that things aren’t quite as they seem, and that there is a deeper conspiracy at play which he must unravel if he is to save himself and those he cares about. To do so, he has to learn to work with the sniper- a man who has sworn to kill him! The inspiration for Sniper’s Eye came from the world around us, where we see conflicts in many parts of the world, where mostly young people are fighting and killing themselves in the name of religion or patriotism, without really thinking of whose purposes they are serving. Sniper’s Eye tries to put two individuals together, who on the face of it are enemies, and get them to discover that perhaps they need to work together to fight those who are actually creating the conflicts in which they and their loved ones are mere pawns. As I write in the book, we live in a world where the young and poor fight and die in wars started by the old and rich.
There's also news of its adaptation to a film. Tell us about that.
Reliance Entertainment has optioned rights to adapt Sniper’s Eye into a web-series, and I’m excited about it. That work slowed down a bit with the onset of the pandemic, but I’m optimistic about it picking up steam in 2021.
What's next after Sniper's Eye?
I just had a non-fiction book, Brand New Start, that released in January, which was inspired by my desire to help young people dealing with career uncertainties in the environment we’re living in nowadays. It aims to equip readers to fast-start their careers by building a more authentic, differentiated and compelling personal brand. However, I will be returning shortly to the world of fiction, and to the world I created in Snipers’ Eye. The second novel in the series, Sniper’s Debt, was published in mid-2020, and I’m currently working on editing the third book in the series, Sniper’s Quest, which should release later in 2021.