Crossword shortlists 2005

The Hutch Crossword shortlists for 2005 were announced recently in three categories: original fiction in English, Indian fiction in translation and original non-fiction in English.

English fiction:

Shauna Singh Baldwin: The Tiger Claw (Penguin)
Rana Dasgupta: Tokyo Cancelled (HarperCollins)
Siddhartha Deb: Surface (Picador)
Cyrus Mistry: The Radiance of Ashes (Picador)
V S Naipaul: Magic Seeds (Picador)
Salman Rushdie: Shalimar the Clown (Random House)

Non-fiction:

Rahul Bhattacharya: Pundits from Pakistan (Picador)
Nayanjyot Lahiri: Finding Forgotten Cities (Permanent Black)
One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: Meena Menon, Neera Adarkar (Seagull)
Suketu Mehta: Maximum City (Penguin Viking)
Ira Pande: Diddi (Penguin)
Mishi Saran: Chasing The Monk’s Shadow (Penguin Viking)

[Amartya Sen’s The Argumentative Indians didn’t make the cut–a surprising omission, IMHO. It’s a strong list, though the Babu was more than a little puzzled that the longlist didn’t include anything from OUP, which has a very strong non-fiction list.)

Indian fiction in translation:

A Dying Banyan: Manzoor Ahtesham (translator Kuldip Singh)(Rupa and Co)
Sangati: Bama (translator Lakshmi Holmstrom) (OUP)
After Kurukshetra: Mahasweta Devi (translator Anjum Katyal) (Seagull)
The Unspoken Curse: V K Madhavan Kutty (translator Prema Jaya Kumar)(Tara Press)
The Survivors: Gurdial Singh (translator Rana Nayar) (Katha)
The Heart Has Its Reasons: Krishna Sobti (translators Reema Anand and Meenakshi Swami)(Katha)