Kurt Vonnegut's letter praising The Revised Kama Sutra

June 1, 1998 

Dear Avatar Prabhu*

I thank you for THE REVISED KAMA SUTRA. I am honored by the dedication, and salute you as a full-fledged colleague, as will Joe Heller, too, I'm sure. . . . 

As for acculturation: Yours is the most fucked-up, bewildering case ever brought to my attention as a reader, starting, for God's sake, with a Roman Catholic upbringing in the famously non-Christian matrix of the Indian sub-continent -- an area, incidentally, and for reasons other than bizarre sexual attitudes, which is much in the news nowadays.

I have met Salmon Rushdie, your peer in blasphemy. While in deep hiding, he gave a corrosively unfavorable review of a book of mine, so I have put out a contract on him. If the Moslem assassins don't get him, my Roman Catholic Italian psychopath will.

Yes--I am reading you, and finding you very funny.

Cheers--

Kurt Vonnegut

[Signature and caricature profile of his head, below which he has written: AGE 75]

*Avatar Prabhu was the pseudonym I used for the American and the German editions. Quite a few people, including my German editor, thought I really was called Avatar Prabhu. Once my German editor realized I was really plain old Richard Crasta, her feelings for me and my book started cooling rather quickly.