The Hindu Literary Award

The shortlist for the Hindu Literary Award, started last year by India's national newspaper The Hindu, was announced today. The Folded Earth is on the shortlist, in some very good company.

Apart from The Folded Earth, the shortlist includes "River of Smoke" by Amitav Ghosh, "The Fakir" (translated from Bengali) by Sunil Gangopadhyay, "Bharatipura" by U.R. Ananthamurthy (translated from Kannada), "Litanies of the Dutch Battery" by N.S. Madhavan (translated from Malayalam), "The Sly Company of People Who Care" by Rahul Bhattacharya, and "The Storyteller of Marrakesh" by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya.

The jury received 129 submissions for the award this year. The award will be announced on 30 October in Chennai.

More news on The Folded Earth:

I will read from the book and answer questions at the Kovalam Literary Festival.which has events in Delhi as well this time. The first Folded Earth session is at 1030 AM on Thursday 29 September. The rest follow, in Kerala, from 30 Sept to 2 October.

A Tagore in Nainital

Sudakshina, from Chitra Deb's 'Thakurbarir Andarmahal' Earlier this month, I went to Abbotsford , a historic estate in Nainital, for the Himalayan Echoes literary festival, run by Janhavi Prasada. The festival took place on the extensive lawns of the estate, which is now run as an elegant hotel, but originally it was a family home and the place had been acquired from its British owners by Janhavi’s great grandfather Jwala Prasada and his wife, Purnima Devi, in the late 19 th century. Janhavi’s new book, Nainital Through Stories, Memories, History mentions this in its first few pages: From Nainital Through Stories I was intrigued to learn that Purnima Devi was a niece of Rabindranath Tagore. She was born (according to Wikipedia) on 13 May 1884, at No. 6, Dwarkanath Tagore's Lane, Jorasanko, Calcutta, to Hemendranath Tagore (1844–1884) of Jorasanko. Hemendranath was the older brother of Rabindranath Tagore, and son of Debendranath Tagore, founder o...

Begum Anees Khan

Once a week around midday, Maulvi Sah’b would come in through the gates of our school in Hyderabad and class would divide briskly into two and troop off to different parts of the building. Those who were Muslim would be at religious instruction classes with him for the next half hour while the others trudged through moral science lessons. Something similar happened during language classes. We would hear a singsong chorus of “A-salaam-aleikum, Aunty”, from the Urdu classroom as we sat at our Sanskrit or Telugu lessons. Through my nomadic childhood, I’ve been at many schools. None exemplified the idea of secular India as intensely as this Muslim school in Hyderabad. Begum Anees Khan, who made it so, died in Hyderabad on August 16. Her passing feels symbolic, as if it signifies the death of a quixotic idea. Anees Khan was not given to seeking the limelight or making speeches. She never spelled out her secularism. It was instinctive: instead of words, there was act...

Daughter of India

Thanks to my wonderful publishers in Romanian, Humanitas, most of my books are read there in translation. Recently, Romanian philosopher Mihaela Gligor, who is the director of the Cluj Centre for Indian Studies in Transylvania, wrote to say: "I edited a volume of essays dedicated to some remarkable Indian women, called "Daughters of India". It just appeared... One chapter is about you and your novels..." The author of this chapter, Anda-Irina Sturza, has written a detailed analysis of my books, having read some of them in Romanian and some in English. This unusual book features essays on the life and work of an eclectic group of women, including mystics, dancers, artists. Amrita Pritam, Maitreyi Devi, Kamala Das, Anita Desai, Kiran Desai, Chitrita Devi are the other writers included here.

anuradha roy

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