Shortlisted for the JCB Prize and Longlisted for the DSC Prize

This has been a dizzying couple of weeks. All the Lives we Never Lived was shortlisted, on 3rd October, for the JCB Literature Prize. And today it has been announced that it is part of the longlist for DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

"The longlist represents the best of South Asian fiction writing over the last year and includes submissions from a diverse mix of publishers and authors of different backgrounds writing on a wide range of issues and themes. The novels include stunning portrayals of migration, war and the pain of displacement, poignant love stories, the exploration of new found relationships and identities, and vivification of the personal struggles, hopes and aspirations that symbolize the urgent and divisive realities of contemporary South Asian life," the Prize committee said in a statement.

Apart from authors based in South Asia, it also features those based outside the region who have brought alive the subtle nuances of South Asian life and culture.

Among the longlisted authors and their works are: Anuradha Roy for "All The Lives We Never Lived"; Arundhati Roy for "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness"; Chandrakanta for "The Saga Of Satisar", translated by Ranjana Kaul; Deepak Unnikrishnan for "Temporary People"; Jayant Kaikini for "No Presents Please", translated by Tejaswini Niranjana; Jeet Thayil for "The Book Of Chocolate Saints"; and Kamila Shamsie for "Home Fire".

The longlist further features Manu Joseph for "Miss Laila Armed And Dangerous"; Mohsin Hamid for "Exit West"; Neel Mukherjee for "A State Of Freedom"; Perumal Murugan for "Poonachi", translated by N. Kalyan Raman; Prayaag Akbar for "Leila"; Rita Chowdhury for "Chinatown Days", translated by Rita Chowdhury; SJ Sindu for "Marriage Of A Thousand Lies"; Sujit Saraf for "Harilal & Sons"; and Tabish Khair for "Night Of Happiness".

The longlist was unveiled at the Oxford Bookstore here and features four translated works from Assamese, Kannada, Tamil and Hindi. Six of the longlisted authors are women, besides three other women translators. Two debut novels have also been recognised by the jury panel, chaired by historian and academic Rudrangshu Mukherjee.

(Information sourced from here)

Painting a Residency

I spent most of May and a part of June at the De Pure Fiction residency in a tiny, isolated hamlet in the Occitanie in France. To write about the place and what it did to my work and to me will take time -- to reflect, to let things settle. Meanwhile, Isabelle Desesquelles, the French novelist who runs the residency, asked me a set of questions before I left, and has posted it on the blog with watercolours I painted while I was there. La Lettre #36 _______________ Anuradha Roy a publié cinq romans. Elle a résidé à la maison De Pure Fiction en ce printemps pour son prochain livre et depuis, les chevreuils, les oiseaux - rouge-gorge familier, huppe fasciée, pivert, coucou - les lézards verts, les libellules bleues, les papillons semblent s’être mis eux aussi à la lecture, la cherchant sous les pétales d’un coquelicot ou au travers du feuillage des oliviers. Peut-être même, tous, envisagent-ils de faire le voyage jusqu’en Inde et l'Himalaya où Anuradha Roy vit, ...

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...

THROWING IT OUT AND STARTING AGAIN

One evening in 2007, just as I was sitting down to dinner in Delhi, my then-brand-new publisher phoned from London. In the marvelously parenthetical, elliptical manner that was to become familiar to me over the next few years, he began talking of symphonies. Had I considered, he wanted to know, how symphonies are structured? “Not really? Well, as it happens . . .” After around ten minutes of his apparently aimless lecture on music, my interrupted dinner stone cold, the penny dropped: On the brink of publication, he wanted me to rethink my opening chapter. (Read it here in Catapult) After I hung up, I returned to my plate of congealed food in silence. My husband and I were to drive up to our hill home at dawn—a holiday to celebrate the end of my endless first novel. And now at the eleventh hour this bombshell about the opening chapter. Even a novice knows that changing an opening chapter is rather more difficult than changing a concluding chapter because it means having to lo...

anuradha roy

Search This Blog