‘The Lowland’ makes the cut with five others.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Indian American author Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Lowland has been shortlisted for the prestigious Man Booker Prize.
The Lowland tells the story of two very close brothers (both in age and relationship), Subhash and Udayan, in 1960s India. Despite their closeness, they are vastly different in terms of personality and life goals. They split up when Subhash decides to emigrate to America and Udayan stays behind in India. However, an incident in Udayan’s past forced Subhash to come back to India and confront the past of the brother he only thought he knew.
Lahiri is joined by five others — Colm Toibin’s The Testament of Mary, NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, Jim Crace’s Harvest, and Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being.
Although Lahiri’s first literary work — Interpreter of Maladies, a short-story collection — was a success in its own right and a winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the author is perhaps best known for her 2003 novel The Namesake, which follows themes present in nearly all of Lahiri’s work: Indian-American families, cultural disparity between east and west, and the clash of tradition and modernity. The novel was made into a film in 2007, which was directed by Mira Nair and starred Kal Penn, Irrfan Khan, and Tabu, and was a critical and commercial success
Novels that win the Man Booker Prize often go on to become successful films. Previous winners include Life of Pi in 2002, The English Patient in 1992, and Schindler’s Ark in 1982. All three novels became very successful films, with the latter two winning the Academy Award for Best Picture and Life of Pi winning four Academy Awards itself this past March.
If Lahiri wins, she will not be the first writer of Indian descent to have done so. British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie, the author of 1981’s Midnight Children (which won him the prize) and 1988’s The Satanic Verses, arguably the most controversial novel of the 20th century and one that led to Rushdie’s life being threatened by various Islamic groups around the world. Kiran Desai’s novel The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker Prize
The winner of this year’s Man Booker Prize, who will receive a monetary award of just over $58,000, will be announced on October 15th.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com