DSC Prize 2012 Longlist announced

The longlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for 2010 was announced in Delhi today. There are 16 books on the list.

The list has both established as well debut novelists. There are also three translated entries. The five member jury each selected three works, revealed jury member Ira Pande. She said the list includes works from South Asia's cultural diversities as well as books that reflect urban as well as rural landscapes. There are two books on Afghanistan.

The shortlist will be announced on October 24 at the Shakespeare Globe in London, while the $50,000 prize will be given during the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2012.

"I am delighted that the DSC Prize is able to provide a global platform to recognize such fine works and present them to a wider audience," Manhad Narula of DSC said.

The longlist:
Omair Ahmad: Jimmy the Terrorist (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)
U.R. Ananthamurthy: Bharathipura ( Oxford University Press, India, Translated by Susheela Punitha)
Chandrakanta: A Street in Srinagar (Zubaan Books, India, Translated by Manisha Chaudhry)
Siddharth Chowdhury: Day Scholar (Picador/Pan Macmillan, India)
Kishwar Desai: Witness the Night (HarperCollins/HarperCollins-India)
Namita Devidayal: Aftertaste (Random House, India)
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni: One Amazing Thing (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin India)
Manu Joseph: Serious Men (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, India)
Usha K.R: Monkey-man (Penguin/Penguin India)
Shehan Karunatilaka: Chinaman (Random House, India)
Tabish Khair: The Thing About Thugs (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins-India)
Jill McGivering: The Last Kestrel (Blue Door/HarperCollins-UK)
Kavery Nambisan: The Story that Must Not Be Told (Viking/Penguin India)
Atiq Rahimi: The Patience Stone (Chatto & Windus/Random House-UK, Translated by Polly McLean)
Kalpish Ratna: The Quarantine Papers (HarperCollins-India)
Samrat Upadhyay: Buddha's Orphan (Rupa Publications, India)

Indians dominate DSC Prize Longlist

Works of 13 Indian authors, including a writer duo, figure in the longlist of 16 titles for the 2012 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature announced today.

Manhad Narula, Ira Pande and Surina Narula at the
announcement of the DSC Prize

The longlist for the USD 50,000 award was chosen from 52 entries which were reviewed by a five-member jury comprising chairperson Ira Pande, Alastair Niven (UK), Fakrul Alam (Bangladesh), Faiza S Khan (Pakistan) and Marie Brenner (US).

The longlisted books include an interesting mix of established as well debut novelists, along with three translated entries, the jury said.

Among the prominent Indian authors longlisted for their works are Manu Joseph (Serious Men), Usha K R (Monkey-man), Tabish Khair (The Thing About Thugs) and Kishwar Desai (Witness the Night).

Commenting on the longlist, Pande said, "This list is an interesting mix of 16 titles chosen after a careful consideration of various styles, languages and subject matter. It reflects the best of the South Asian literary tradition - a wide landscape of rural and urban life, intricate rituals of story-telling and an indication of its evolving form.

"This is the East, seen as it is by some of the most promising novelists of Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India, and as it appears to those who live elsewhere."

Full report here Outlook

A time to scribble and revel

Perhaps nowhere else, for now, is the printed word in such rude health as in South Asia. The region’s writers have much to cheer. Readers have a raging appetite for text on a page, and they are happy to spend money for it. (Most gratifying, at least for a journalist, is to see the old-fashioned newspaper industry flourish as literacy levels rise and a middle class grows.) Advertisers and sponsors are hungry to reach book readers, reckoning that they are among the region’s wealthier and better educated consumers. As a result, cash-rich banks, insurance and construction companies, among others, fall over each other to stump up for literary festivals and book prizes.

Take the announcement today that 16 novelists have been put on a prize longlist for writing on South Asia. DSC, a big Indian building firm, sponsors the prize and is also part of the largest annual literary festival in India, in Jaipur, which burst at the seams with 200 authors and nearly 100,000 visitors this January. The firm is also involved in a South Asia writing festival that will be held soon in London. This is only the second year of the DSC prize, so it hardly has the pedigree of the Man Booker one, say, which has been around for over four decades. But measure it in hard cash—$50,000 for the DSC award, ₤50,000 for the Booker—the South Asian award starts to look serious.

Full report here Economist blogs

DSC Prize 2012 Longlist on Wednesday

India's biggest literary prize in monetary value, the DSC Prize 2012 Longlist will be announced in Delhi on Wednesday, September 14.

The Longlist will be announced by Ira Pande, Chair of the Jury. In the spirit of promoting South Asian writing we will also be presenting a discussion on "The Question of Identity: South Asian Fiction in Perspective" by Namita Gokhale, Tarun Tejpal and Sanjoy Roy.

Pakistani writer HM Naqvi won the big prize last year for his novel, Homeboy.

Long-list for first DSC Prize out

A bunch of contemporary South Asian authors, including Indian names like Amit Chaudhuri and Upamanyu Chatterjee and young writers from Pakistan such as H M Naqvi and Ali Sethi were today named in the long-list of the first DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

The prize, whose long-list has 14 books, carries an award money of USD 50,000, and will recognise English writing in the South Asian region. The long-list and the jury were announced here today.

The jury for the prize includes internationally acclaimed literary figures Lord Matthew Evans, Ian Jack, Amitava Kumar, Moni Mohsin and Nilanjana S Roy who is the Chairperson.

The award was announced in January this year by infrastructure firm DSC, which is the main sponsor of the prestigious Jaipur Literature Festival.

The short-list of five from among the 14 selected works will be announced at the DSC South Asian Literature Festival, scheduled to be held in UK at the end of October, and its winner will be declared at the Jaipur literature festival in January next year.

The long-list includes Amit Chaudhuri's The Immortals, a story set in the Mumbai of 1970s and early 1980s, Mumbai-based Chandrahas Choudhury's Arzee the Dwarf and Upamanyu Chatterjee's Way to Go.

Full report here Outlook