The shortlist for
the fifth annual DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was
announced at the London School of
Economics and Political Science late last week.
A dynamic mix of books made
the cut. The shortlist of five features: two authors of Indian origin, Jhumpa Lahiri (The Lowland - Vintage Books /
Random House, India) and Shamsur
Rahman Faruqi (The
Mirror of Beauty - Penguin Books, India); Pakistani authors Bilal Tanweer (The Scatter Here is Too Great - Vintage
Books / Random House, India) and Kamila
Shamsie (A God in Every
Stone - Bloomsbury, India); and Sri Lankan born British writer Romesh Gunesekera (Noontide Toll - Hamish
Hamilton / Penguin, India).
The shortlist was announced by an international five member jury
panel that comprised: Keki
Daruwalla, Indian
writer and poet; John Freeman, author,
literary critic and former
editor of Granta; Maithree Wickramasinghe, a
professor of English at the University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka and the University
of Sussex and an expert on gender studies; Michael Worton, Emeritus Professor at University College
London, who has written extensively on modern literature and art; and Razi Ahmed, founding director of
the annual, Lahore Literary Festival.
Keki Daruwalla, chair of the jury said: “It was a difficult task to zero in on a shortlist from an enjoyable,
if formidable longlist. There were two first novels as well as novels by
established writers and a translation. There were moments of great beauty
in the multiple narratives and the jury was impressed by the deep structure of
each book and the way characters were developed. All the
novelists engaged with rich, historical and experimental traditions of
storytelling. The landscape in all the novels was quintessentially South
Asian. The jury was glad to find that the plots were uniformly organic and
the writers did not succumb to formulaic writing. Most of the novels grappled
with the socio-political realities on the ground. All of them did so in ways
that were moving, challenging, and thought-provoking.”
The winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2015 will be
awarded at the Jaipur Literature
Festival on 22nd
January 2015.
Shortlisted
Authors:
§ Bilal Tanweer: The Scatter Here is Too Great (Vintage
Books / Random House, India)
§ Jhumpa Lahiri: The Lowland (Vintage Books / Random
House, India)
§ Kamila Shamsie: A God in Every Stone (Bloomsbury,
India)
§ Romesh Gunesekera: Noontide Toll (Hamish
Hamilton / Penguin, India)
§ Shamsur Rahman Faruqi: The Mirror of Beauty (Penguin,
India)
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