Indians have made it to the longlist of DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017 which was announced today at the Oxford Bookstore in Delhi. Termed by many as the Booker Prize of South Asia, the coveted $25000 international prize is given out to works of fiction in which the stories, either culturally or thematically, sprout from the South Asian region. The winner is announced in different South Asian countries by rotation and this year it will be announced at the Dhaka Literature Festival.
Other than Indians the list also includes authors from Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the USA, all of whom got longlisted from a crop of 69 novels. A shortlist will be announced in London next month, with the winner to be announced on 18th November. The literary prize previously went to 4 Indians – Jeet Thayil for Narcopolis, Cyrus Mistry for Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, Jhumpa Lahiri for The Lowland and Anuradha Roy for Sleeping on Jupiter – 1 Sri Lankan, Shehan Karunatilaka for Chinaman and 1 Pakistani, H. M. Naqvi for Homeboy.
Check out the longlist:
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.
The Parcel by Anosh Irani (India, Canada):
Irani’s fourth novel, this is a story of a transgender sex worker in the notorious red-light district of Bombay who deals with the arrival of ‘the parcel’ – a young girl trafficked from the interiors.
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.
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 by many decisions that question the world around him.
The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons by Ashok Ferry (Sri Lanka):
The novel centres around Sonny, who shuttles between England and Kandy in Sri Lanka, and his mother who is convinced that her son is possessed by demons.
South Haven by Hirsh Sawhney (USA):
This is the second work of fiction for the author of Delhi Noir. Siddharth Arora had been living an ordinary life until his mother dies in a car accident. His father slips into the venom of Hindu fundamentalism and Siddharth gets a chance to start afresh when a woman enters his life.
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.
The Poison of Love by K. R. Meera (India):
The famous Malayali writer, who is known for books like Hangwoman, wrote a story of love, sacrifice, pain and retribution, centred around Tulsi who leaves everything in the pursuit of love.
The Party Worker by Omar Shahid Hamid (Pakistan):
This is the third novel of the author who was previously longlisted for Jimmy The Terrorist and tells the tale of two cities: New York and Karachi, both engulfed in the world of crime.
Pyre by Perumal Murugan (India):
Saroja and Kumaresan are in love. They arrive in Kumaresan’s native village, with the dangerous secret that their marriage is an inter-caste. The novel deals with the idea of love in the times of intolerance.
This Wide Night by Sarvat Hasin (Pakistan):
The debut novel is set in Karachi in the 1970s and pillars on the stories of four sisters and their unconventional family whose bonds are tested time and again.
Those Children by Shahbano Bilgrami (Pakistan):
Another novel from Pakistan, the narrative details of the heartbreak of losing one’s mother and the difficulty of detaching oneself from their homeland.
In The Jungles of the Night by Stephen Alter (USA):
The novel is about Jim Corbett and details his life right from his childhood in Nainital to his retirement post partition in Kenya.
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