Rushdie, Lahiri, Deshpande in Commonwealth Writers’ Prize shortlists

The shortlists for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book and Best First Book from Europe and South Asia were announced today, 18 February 2009. Shashi Deshpande, Salman Rushdie, Jhumpa Lahiri, Chris Cleave, David Lodge, and Philip Hensher are among the six contenders for the Best Book award.

The shortlists:
Best Book Award
Chris Cleave (United Kingdom) The Other Hand Sceptre
Shashi Deshpande (India) In the Country of Deceit Penguin
Philip Hensher (United Kingdom) The Northern Clemency Fourth Estate
Jhumpa Lahiri (United Kingdom) Unaccustomed Earth Bloomsbury Publishing
David Lodge (United Kingdom) Deaf Sentence Harvill Secker
Salman Rushdie (United Kingdom) The Enchantress of Florence Random House
Best First Book Award
Sulaiman Addonia (United Kingdom) The Consequences of Love Chatto and Windus
Daniel Clay (United Kingdom) Broken Harper Collins
Joe Dunthorne (United Kingdom) Submarine Penguin
Mohammed Hanif (Pakistan) The Case of Exploding Mangoes Jonathan Cape
Murzaban Shroff (India) Breathless in Bombay St. Martin's Griffin

The judging panel for the Europe and South Asia region was chaired by Professor Makarand Paranjape (India). He was joined by judges, Dr Durre Ahmed (Pakistan) and Dr Alex Tickell (UK). Professor Paranjape commented, ‘What distinguished this year’s entries was a preponderance of well-established authors including Salman Rushdie, Philip Hensher, Shashi Deshpande and Jhumpa Lahiri in the Best Book category and some very talented new voices such as Mohammed Hanif and Joe Dunthorne in the Best First Book category. Though most of the short-listed authors either live in the UK or are British subjects, they are actually quite diverse in their origins.’

The Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, a much valued and sought-after award, aims to reward the best Commonwealth fiction written in English, by both established and new writers, and to take their works to a global audience.
The two Europe and South Asia regional winners that emerge from the shortlists will be announced on 12 March 2009. These two winners will then enter the final phase of the competition and go on to compete head to head with the other six finalists from Africa, Canada and the Caribbean, South East Asia and the South Pacific for the overall Best Book and Best First Book award. The two overall winners, chosen by an international panel of six judges coming together in New Zealand, will be announced on 16 May at the Auckland Writers' and Readers Festival (AWRF).

Each of the regional winners will receive £1,000 and in addition be invited to take part in a week-long series of community events and public readings alongside the final judging in New Zealand, culminating in the announcement of the two overall winners for Best First Book and Best Book. The overall Best Book winner will receive £10,000 and the overall Best First Book winner will receive £5,000.