Literature award for Omair Ahmed and Anjali Joseph

Authors Omair Ahmed and Anjali Joseph won the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in the Indian Fiction category for their books, “Jimmy, The terrorist” and “Saraswati Park” respectively on Friday.

Authors Omair Ahmed and Anjali Joseph won the Vodafone Crossword Book Award in the Indian Fiction category for their books, “Jimmy, The terrorist” and “Saraswati Park” respectively on Friday.

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The award ceremony, which was in its tenth year, recognised the country’s finest writers and their talent.

VS Ramachandran received an award in the Indian non-fiction category for his book, “The Tell Tale Brain”.

The popular award voted by readers went to Ashwin Sanghi’s Chanakya's Chant, a historical tale.

“For the first time, none of the books voted for in the popular category were from the jury’s short list of nominees,” said Harish Sethi, senior journalist and jury member in the non-fiction category.

In the Indian language translation category, NS Madhavan and Rajesh Rajmohan received an award for the book, “Litanies of Dutch Battery”.

Indian TV personality, journalist and author, Mrinal Pandey, who was the chief guest at the event said, “Literature mutates and evolves with time.” She added that,“In a country fortunate to be blessed with many regional languages, we all sadly become monolingual by the time we are 30. It’s a case of tongues disappearing within the mouth.”