Maverick scientists, lovelorn security guards, magical backyards: Meet JCB Literature Prize 2023 longlist

The final debut is The Colony of Shadows (Rs 499, Hachette) by Bikram Sharma. It’s about a young boy who has lost his parents and discovered a magical colony in his new family’s backyard, one that is familiar but dangerous, comforting but mysterious.

The first Hindi-to-English translation on the longlist is Simsim (Rs 499, Penguin) by Geet Chaturvedi, translated by Anita Gopalan. It revolves around a conversation between a young boy and an old man, their conflicting goals of ambition and acceptance forming a majority of the narrative thrust.

The second Hindi-to-English translation is I Named my Sister Silence (Rs 499, Westland) by Manoj Rupda, translated by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, who has also featured on the JCB longlist previously. The book is about a brother who is raised by his sister, goes on a coming-of-age journey around the world and returns to find his sister has joined the Naxalites. How? Why? That’s the mystery.

The Bengali-to-English translation is The Nemesis (Rs 599, Westland) by Manoranjan Byapari, translated by V. Ramaswamy. This is Byapari’s third time on the longlist. The novel is about a cook whose caste is discovered and vilified by his clients, forcing him to reckon with how his wealth, caste and gender are all connected to a larger national story.

The Tamil-to-English translation is Fire Bird (Rs 499, Penguin) by Perumal Murugan, who is on the longlist for a third time. The novel has been translated by Janani Kannan, and tells the story of a man whose family land has been usurped from him, forcing him to find a new life for his wife and children.

Everything the Light Touches (Rs 499, HarperCollins) by Janice Pariat is also on the longlist, and tells the story of four individuals across space and time as they grapple with questions of identity, colonialism and scientific temperament – all with a healthy dose of snarky scepticism.

Mansur (Rs 599, Pan Macmillan) by Vikramajit Ram revolves around a book illustrated by Mughal-era painter Mansur which he must deliver to empress Nur Jahan – but unseemly forces are trying to lay their hands on it too.

Manjhi’s Mayhem (Rs 399, Penguin) by Tanuj Solanki (who is on the longlist a second time) is about a Bombay café’s security guard whose quest to please a restaurant hostess goes horribly wrong, launching him on a trail of “broken noses, bloody heads, sex, seduction, and murder.”

This year’s jury consists of writer Srinath Perur (chair), playwright Mahesh Dattani, critic Somak Ghoshal, writer and surgeon Kavery Nambisan, and journalist Swati Thiyagarajan.

Perur said, “The jury read the entries over the last few months, meeting online every couple of weeks. We read for freshness, relevance, accomplishment and ambition among other things. And we read for pleasure… Taken together [the books] represent a fine sampling of the breadth and quality of Indian novels published in English over the last year.”

The JCB Prize is an annual award to a book-length work of fiction in English or translation. It is in its sixth edition and awards Rs 25 lakh to the winning author and Rs 10 lakh to its translator, if applicable. Last year’s award was won by Khalid Jawed’s Paradise of Food (Rs 499, Juggernaut).

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