DSC Prize longlist for 2017 out. Perumal Murugan, Aravind Adiga among 13 contenders

The 13 novels on the longlist include two works of translations and three debuts.

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, which carries an award of $25,000 (over Rs 16 lakh) announced its longlist of 13 novels on August 10. In a first, the list also has two novels in translation – KR Meera’s The Poison of Love and Perumal Murugan’s Pyre – which have been translated into English from Malayalam and Tamil.

While the list includes well-known names like Aravind Adiga, Ashok Ferrey, Karan Mahajan, Stephen Alter, it also features three debuts – Anosh Irani’s The Parcel, Hirsh Sawhney’s South Haven and Sarvat Hasin’s This Wide Night.

On the list are seven Indian, three Pakistani, two Sri Lankan and an India-based American writer. The shortlist will be announced on September 27 in London.

The longlisted entries for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017 are:

* Anjali Joseph: The Living (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, UK)

* Anosh Irani: The Parcel (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, India)

* Anuk Arudpragasam: The Story of a Brief Marriage (Granta Books, UK)

* Aravind Adiga: Selection Day (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, India)

* Ashok Ferrey: The Ceaseless Chatter of Demons (Penguin Books, Penguin Random House, India)

* Hirsh Sawhney: South Haven (Akashic Books, USA)

* Karan Mahajan: The Association of Small Bombs (Chatto & Windus, UK)

* K.R. Meera: The Poison of Love (Translated by Ministhy S, Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House, India)

* Omar Shahid Hamid: The Party Worker (Pan Macmillan, India)

* Perumal Murugan: Pyre (Translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House, India)

* Sarvat Hasin: This Wide Night (Hamish Hamilton, Penguin Random House, India)

* Shahbano Bilgrami: Those Children (HarperCollins, India)

* Stephen Alter: In the Jungles of the Night (Aleph Book Company, India)

The longlist was announced at the Oxford Bookstore in New Delhi on August 10 by feminist writer and publisher Ritu Menon. Menon chaired the five-member international jury panel for 2017, which longlisted these 13 titles from over 60 entries. Other jury members include Valentine Cunningham, professor emeritus at Oxford University; American director-screenwriter Steven Bernstein; UK-based journalist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown; Senath Walter Perera, who teaches English at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka.

“As a jury, we were struck by several exceptional qualities in the novels selected: their inventiveness and creativity, both of subject matter and in literary treatment. We admired the maturity and humanity of the perspective they brought to bear on their characters, and the delicacy of their observations on difficult or troubled situations,” said Ritu Menon, while revealing the longlisted titles.

A shortlist of 5/6 books will be declared on September 27 at the LSE in London, UK. The winner would be announced at the Dhaka Literary Festival on November 18, 2017. The DSC Prize 2016 was awarded to Anuradha Roy for her novel Sleeping on Jupiter. Past winners include HM Naqvi (Pakistan), Jeet Thayil, Cyrus Mistry (India) and Shehn Karunatilaka (Sri Lanka).

Follow @htlifeandstyle for more