otter of books

Category: literary prizes

  • Book review: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

    Book review: Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

    Home Fire Kamila Shamsie Bloomsbury, 264 pages ISBN: 9781408886786 “I have been a stranger here in my own land: All my life” – Antigone, in the play by Sophocles, b circa 496 BC It takes nerve and a steady hand for a writer to adapt a classic. The pitfalls are many – the Mahabharata, and Shakespeare’s […]

  • The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature: The (revised) longlist

    (Following a clarification on the rules of eligibility regarding publication dates for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the jury is happy to announce the revised longlist. It was brought to the jury’s attention that two novels previously discussed and endorsed were, under the rules, eligible for contention in the final analysis. Here is […]

  • A Touch of Strange: The Booker shortlist 2010

    (Published in the Business Standard, September 14, 2010)The Booker shortlist doesn’t always offer the best books of the year—judges are fallible, the competition intense, and it often happens that works left off the list will continue to find readers and faithful acolytes. A few years ago, Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland failed to make the cut, but […]

  • DSC Prize: deadline extended to 5th May

    For publishers: got this from the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature team: “We are extending the deadline for entries for the DSC prize for SouthAsian Literature to 5th May, 2010. This is due to several requests comingfrom many publishing houses, mostly overseas, whose entries are delayeddue to the grounding of flights after the volcano […]

  • Speaking Volumes: The Empire’s orphan children

    (Published in the Business Standard, April 2010)As a touchingly emotional Rana Dasgupta rose to receive the Commonwealth Award for Best Book on Monday evening, he joined a long list of distinguished winners, from Mordecai Richler and Rohinton Mistry to Peter Carey, Vikram Seth and Andrea Levy. Dasgupta’s Solo, his second book and first novel, is […]

  • The BS Column: The evolving Oriental marketplace

    (Published in the Business Standard, October 6, 2009) This is prize season as the winners of both the Booker and the Nobel are to be announced this week. India has a strong, though not entirely healthy, fascination with both the prizes, slightly dimmed this year because we don’t have a horse in the Booker race. […]

  • Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, 2009 shortlist

    It’s not on the website yet, but sources say this is confirmed–fiction-heavy this year: Anuradha Roy: An Atlas of Impossible Longing Chandrahas Choudhury: Arzee the Dwarf Mimlu Sen: Baulsphere Mridula Koshy: If It Is Sweet Palash Krishna Mehrotra: Eunuch Park Parismita Singh: Hotel at the End of the World Preeta Samarasan: Evening is the Whole […]

  • The BS Column: Crossword shortlists 2009

    (Published in the Business Standard, 29 June 2009) In the eleven years since the first Crossword award was instituted, several groups of people have benefited. The awards have been handed out for nine years—it took a three-year break from 2000 to 2004—and the categories have expanded from just English fiction by Indian writers to include […]

  • Between the lines

    (Published in the Business Standard, January 16, 2007) Jean-Paul Sartre turned down the Nobel as well as every other literary honour he was ever offered. He believed that by accepting a literary award, a writer became part of the establishment, and in his view, a writer could only work if he was outside the system. […]