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)

Crossword awards announced

The Vodafone Crossword Book Awards 2010, the Crossword Book Award in the Indian Fiction category was jointly won by Omair Ahmed for Jimmy, The Terrorist and Anjali Joseph for Saraswati Park.

The award for Indian Non-Fiction went to VS Ramachandran for The Tell Tale Brain while Ranjit Lal won the award for Children's Writing for Faces in the Water.

The Vodafone Crossword Popular Book Award, which offers readers the opportunity to vote (online) for their favourite book from the list of the shortlisted books across the Indian Fiction and Indian Non-Fiction categories, was won by author Ashwin Sanghi for Chanakya's Chant.

The rest of the winners were selected by a panel of judges comprising well-known academics, critics and writers such as Geeta Doctor, Githa Hariharan, CS Lakshmi, Harsh Sethi, Sampurna Chattarji and Anshumani Ruddhra.

Full report here DNA

Related news: 
Literature award for Omair Ahmed and Anjali Joseph Hindustan Times
Awards for excellence in Indian writing Times of India

Literature in High Places

The list of Asian literature festivals is ever-expanding

Bhutan, as you probably know, is the only country in the world to measure the Gross National Happiness of its citizens. For its book lovers, there’s going to be a spike in the graph, come May, when its capital, Thimphu, plays host to the India-Bhutan Foundation’s Mountain Echoes, the country’s first literary festival.
It joins the ever-expanding list of Asian literature festivals — there were jamborees in Hong Kong, Dubai and Karachi in the past month alone — and features some of the usual suspects: Namita Gokhale is programme consultant, Mita Kapur’s Siyahi is an associate, and Pavan Varma, the writer-diplomat who is currently India’s ambassador to Bhutan, is one of the lead movers behind it.

The procession on stage will be led by the Queen Mother, Ashi Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck and the PM, Lyonpo Jigmi Yoser Thinley. Other names on the roster include Urvashi Butalia, Omair Ahmad, Mitali Saran, Bulbul Sharma, Rajkumar Hirani (mandatory Bollywood presence), Chetan Bhagat (alas, not in the same event as Hirani), Gulzar, Sampurna Chattarji, Mamang Dai, Temsula Ao, Patrick French, Sadanand Dhume, Penguin India’s Ravi Singh, Leila Seth and Sarnath Bannerjee.

Full report here Moneycontrol.com