Novelist Amitav Ghosh shared the Vodafone-Crossword Book Awards 2008 for his book
Sea of Poppies with writer-reviewer Neel Mukherjee for his novel
Past Continuous in the English fiction category.
The awards were announced at a glittering function in the Nehru Auditorium
in Mumbai.
Curfewed Nights by Basharat Pir won the award in the English non-fiction category while Delhi-based writer Ira Pande's novel T'TA Professor, the English translation of veteran journalist Shyam Manohar Joshi's novel of the same name, won the award in the category for Indian language fiction translation. The book was originally written in Hindi. Pallavi Iyer won the Vodafone-Crossword Popular Book Award for her book Smoke & Mirrors.
Sahitya Akademi and Commonwealth prize winning author Nayantara Sahgal was the chief guest at the function. The panel of judges comprised of Usha KR, Rukmini Bhaya-Nair, Mukund Padmanabhan, Harsh Sethi, Jerry Rao and Jyotirmay Sharma, Arunava Sinha and Rita Kothari.