The Shakti Bhatt Foundation, which now enters its 12th year, has announced its shortlist for this year. The judges, poet-author Jeet Thayil and author Arshia Sattar, shared the list and remarked, "As our democratic processes are brutally demolished and our voices of dissent are choked off, our public and private bookshelves can stand tall as spaces of resistance. Solidarities can still be created by the books that we write and read and share." The five books that made it this year are, Goodbye Freddie Mercury by Nadia Akbar, Babu Bangladesh! by Numair Atif Chowdhury, Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction by Roshan Ali, No Nation for Women by Priyanka Dubey and Early Indians by Tony Joseph. ALSO READ | Sujatha Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants bags Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2018 Akbar's novel is set against a Lahore that is entrenched in corruption and provides a morbid and compelling picture of how it usurps the dreams and aspirations of the new generation. Chowdhury's novel unfolds in Bangladesh 2028 where a biographer documents the life of a political luminary, ‘Babu Bangladesh’ also known as Babu. As the novel proceeds, the story of one man gives way to the story of a nation. Ali's debut, as indicated by the title, traces the journey of a boy named Ib as he is stranded between schizophrenic father and an inscrutable mother. Dubey's gritty work sheds light on the situation of women in India, examines the parameters that make it unsafe for them, and upholds a reality looking beyond newspaper headlines. And Joseph's work, as suggested, traces back to the early years to identify, locate and answer the question, 'Where did we come from?' "As our democratic processes are brutally demolished and our voices of dissent are choked off, our public and private bookshelves can stand tall as spaces of resistance. Solidarities can still be created by the books that we write and read and share. This year’s shortlist is a shoutout to those spaces and solidarities," they say in the a post shared on Facebook.
