Aravind Adiga, Anjali Joseph, and Karan Mahajan are the three Indian-origin writers among the five (check the complete shortlist below) who have been shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017. The jury led by writer-publisher Ritu Menon made the announcement on Wednesday, September 27 at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Speaking on behalf of the jury which included Senath Walter Perera, Steven Bernstein, Valentine Cunningham and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Menon said: “After deliberating on the many exceptional qualities of the novels selected, and considering the disparities in our backgrounds, the jury was unanimous in its decision on the five shortlisted titles. All five display a remarkable skill in animating current universal preoccupations in unconventional idioms, and from a distinctively South Asian perspective.”
Termed by many as the Booker Prize of South Asia, the coveted US $25,000 international literary prize is given out to works of fiction in which the stories, either culturally or thematically, sprout from the South Asian region. Earlier a longlist of 13 novels, which comprised of 7 authored by writers of Indian-origin, was announced at the Oxford Bookstore in Delhi.
Also Read: 7 Indian origin writers among 13 longlisted for the DSC Prize 2017
Check out the shortlist:
The Living by Anjali Joseph (India, UK)
An author of two previous novels, Joseph has returned with a story of two people, Claire and Atul, who, though live thousands of miles apart, are thematically connected by the art of making footwear.
Selection Day by Aravind Adiga (India, Australia)
The third novel by the Man Booker Prize winner tells the story of Manju, a fourteen-year-old boy good at cricket, and his elder brother Radha. When Manju gets to know about his brother’s privileged rival, he is faced with many decisions that question the world around him.
The Story of a Brief Marriage by Anuk Arudpragasam (Sri Lanka)
Anuk’s debut novel, it is a tale of a man thrust into Sri Lanka’s harrowing civil war. The story deals with the themes of suffering, marriage and survival.
The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan (India, USA)
Mansoor Ahmed survives a bomb – one in a series of small bombs that go off across the world – which got detonated in a Delhi marketplace. Mansoor is left to live with the physical and psychological effects of the incident.
In The Jungles of the Night by Stephen Alter (USA)
The novel revolves around the life of the famed hunter and conservationist Jim Corbett and details his life right from his childhood in Nainital to his retirement post-partition in Kenya.
The winner is announced in different South Asian countries by rotation and this year it will be announced at the Dhaka Literature Festival on November 18.
Source: The Indian Express
