Prize Acts

Upamanyu Chatterjee’s dark and austere novel Way to Go,Sri Lankan writer Ru Freeman’s A Disobedient Girl,and HM Naqvi’s Home Boy,a tale of immigration,love and loss,are among the 16 names in the longlist for the first DSC Prize for South Asian Literature,announced on Tuesday. The $50,000 award (Rs 23 lakh approximately),instituted by infrastructure major DSC,which also organises the Jaipur Literature Festival,answers what Lord Meghnad Desai calls,“a need to recognise the South Asian mode of thinking.”

The five-member jury,comprising Labour politician and former chairman of Faber and Faber,Matthew Evans,Pakistani writer Moni Mohsin,novelist Amitava Kumar among others,went through more than 55 books. Tamil poet and novelist Rokkaiah Salma’s debut novel Irandaam Jaamattin Kadai,translated by Laksmi Holmstrom as The Hour Past Midnight,and Sankar’s The Middleman,translated by Arunava Sinha from the Bengali Jana Aranya are in contention.

Chandrahas Choudhury’s Arzee the Dwarf,Amit Chaudhuri’s The Immortals,Musharraf Ali Farooqui’s The Story of a Widow,Anjum Hasan’s Neti Neti,Manju Kapur’s The Immigrant,Ali Sethi’s The Wish Maker,Jaspreet Singh’s Chef,Aatish Taseer’s (in the picture)The Temple Goers and Tania James’ first novel Atlas of Unknowns are the other names on the list. The shortlist will be announced on October 25 in London and the prize will be given out during the Jaipur Literature Festival in January.