Chetan Bhagat’s latest book at Wasawa Singh’s in Bistupur, Jamshedpur, on Sunday. Picture by Bhola Prasad

Who says Jamshedpur does not read books? While many may not have heard the names of recent Man Booker Award winners, Indian author Chetan Bhagat manages to hook the young and the young-at-heart every time.

The 37-year-old Bhagat’s fifth and latest best-seller Revolution 2020 has proved to be an irresistible page-turner for his Jamshedpur fans.

Some 100 copies arrived in the city at the city’s premier bookstores on October 8, a day after its nation-wide release in New Delhi, and book lovers of Jamshedpur, in this short span of hours, have managed to buy most of them.

In fact, festive vacations mean that teenagers and youths have more time on their hand to read. Not surprisingly, school and college-going students who have already read his four earlier books — Five Point Someone, One Night at a Call Centre, Three Mistakes of My Life and 2 states — thronged to the Bistupur bookstores to grab the latest offering of their favourite author.

At Wasawa Singh’s, all 50 copies have been sold. Owner of Wasawa Singh’s, Mukhtyar Singh had ordered more 300 copies.

“Chetan Bhagat knows how to sell dreams to his readers. His fans are mostly teenagers. In fact, the author writes in a style where he can relate to a youngster’s dreams and aspirations. This book came after two years of 2 states, so the craze is more,” said the bookstore proprietor.

Likewise, Agarwal Bookstore in Bistupur, which also had an initial consignment of 50 copies, saw good sales. “School children love his books. We’ve ordered more copies now,” said Bimal Agarwal, proprietor.

Revolution 2020, published by Rupa and Co., is a book about three friends Gopal, Raghav and Aarti. The plot has Bhagat’s trademark take on youthful love but corruption is the real theme of the story that is set in one of India’s oldest cities, Varanasi.

Bhagat himself, in his many interviews to the media, has said that his books are not supposed to be read as literary masterpieces but stories about young Indians.

The author, born and brought up in New Delhi, is an IIT-Delhi and IIM-Ahmedabad alumnus, who quit his job as an investment banker in Hong Kong to focus on writing fiction. The rest, as they say, is history.

In 2008, The New York Times hailed him as “India’s biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history”.

The writer is based currently based in Mumbai and works on themes such as campus life, the dynamics of new-age workplaces such as call centres, aspirations of youngsters in India’s small towns, politics of communalism and caste and how it affects the youth, inter-state love marriages and the like.

All these have been lapped up by his ever-increasing band of readers. His claims of being able to sense the pulse of the youth find resonance among his fans.

“Academic or serious literature is different from these books, obviously, but Bhagat’s books are good as light reads. At times, they seem superficial, but they are always gripping,” said reader Nandini Pathak, an English honours student of Jamshedpur Women’s College.