Shamsur Rahman Faruqi also in the reckoning.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The Lowland’, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, is among five books in the reckoning for the $50,000 DSC Prize, one of South Asia’s biggest literary awards.
The jury selected the five finalists from 75 novels submitted for the award, now in its fifth year, in London. The winner will be announced at the annual literature festival in the Indian city of Jaipur in January, reported Reuters.
Read the review of ‘The Lowland’ in The American Bazaar:
Ghosts of the past stalk ‘The Lowland’
Poet, novelist and literary critic Shasur Rahman Faruqi has also been shortlisted for his novel “The Mirror of Beauty” which he translated from Urdu and deals with the sunset of the Mughal Empire, reported the Press Trust of India.
Pakistani author Bilal Tanweer is on the shortlist for his debut book “The Scatter Here Is Too Great”, which won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize for this year.
Kamila Shamsie, also from Pakistan has been nominated for “A God in Every Stone” while Sri Lankan-born London based writer Romesh Gunesekera’s “Noontide Toll” is also nominated. Gunesekera was a finalist at the Man Booker Prize for his novel “Reef” in 1994.
Previous winners of the DSC Prize include HM Naqvi from Pakistan for “Homeboy”, Shehan Karunatilaka from Sri Lanka for “Chinaman”, Jeet Thayil for “Narcopolis” and Cyrus Mistry for “Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer”.
Keki Daruwalla, the chair of judges, described the selections as “moving, challenging, and thought-provoking.”
“There were moments of great beauty in the multiple narratives and the jury was impressed by the deep structure of each book and the way characters were developed,” Daruwalla said in a statement.
The finalists are:
* Bilal Tanweer for “The Scatter Here is Too Great” (Vintage Books/Random House);
* Jhumpa Lahiri for “The Lowland” (Vintage Books/Random House);
* Kamila Shamsie for “A God in Every Stone” (Bloomsbury);
* Romesh Gunesekera for “Noontide Toll” (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin);
* Shamsur Rahman Faruqi for “The Mirror of Beauty” (Penguin Books).