DSC Prize for South Asian Literature: your guide to the shortlisted books
On Thursday, London School of Economics saw varied literary greats converge as the shortlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2016 was announced. The DSC prize is awarded to the best fiction writer of any nationality or ethnicity; to be nominated one has to write about South Asia and its people. And the prize money is $50,000.
Another striking feature about this prize is that writing in regional languages is highly encouraged and in case their entry wins, the prize money is equally shared between the author and the translator.
The five-member jury panel headed by Mark Tully have shortlisted the following books for this year's prize:
Winner of the Hemingway Award in 2001 for his novel The Obedient Father, Akhil Sharma's second novel is a darkly comic tale about a young Delhi boy who travels with his family to the US in the late 1970s and the tragedy that follows their family when the events of one day change the course of their lives.
This is an intriguing tale of three elderly women on a pilgrimage who encounter a wild, young woman lifting the lid on the seemingly serene temple town. The stark novel has been written by Anuradha Roy who won the Economist Crossword Prize for Fiction for her work The Folded Earth.
Written by a former journalist, this novel explores the changes in the life of Chetna, India's first woman executioner. The novel is a coming-of-age story of a young girl expected to take a life while the entire nation watches the entire drama unfold with voyeuristic pleasure. The book has been translated from Malayalam by acclaimed translator J Devika.
A tale of love during war, The Book of Gold Leaves is a beautiful love story set in Kashmir in 1991 as Srinagar simmers in political strife. Mirza Waheed had earlier authored The Collaborator which was an international bestseller and was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award.
Set in Calcutta in the late 1960s, this is a tale of an idealist young man who gets involved with political extremism and disappears, leaving his family behind which slowly begins to unravel. This is Neel Mukherjee's second book to be shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Authored by the Chief Editor of Indian Express, this novel is a tale of Delhi and its people. Following the events in the life of a woman, her newborn baby and man in a metro, She Will Build Him a City forms a 'dazzling kaleidoscope of a novel'.
![BJP's Kapil Mishra recreates Shankar Mahadevan’s ‘Breathless’ song to highlight Delhi pollution [WATCH]](https://images.catchnews.com/upload/2022/11/03/kapil-mishra_240884_300x172.png "BJP's Kapil Mishra recreates Shankar Mahadevan’s ‘Breathless’ song to highlight Delhi pollution [WATCH]")
![Anupam Kher shares pictures of his toned body on 67th birthday [MUST SEE]](https://images.catchnews.com/upload/2022/03/07/Anupam_kher_231145_300x172.jpg "Anupam Kher shares pictures of his toned body on 67th birthday [MUST SEE]")
