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Anuradha Roy wins 2016 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
Indian writer Anuradha Roy was awarded the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2016 for her novel Sleeping on Jupiter at a ceremony held at the Fairway Galle Literary Festival yesterday.
Anuradha Roy receiving the prize from Premier Ranil Wickremesinghe. Pic by M.D. Nissanka
The US$ 50,000 prize was awarded to the winner by Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Speaking to the Sunday Times after the ceremony, Anuradha Roy described herself as being “completely stunned” and added that an award of this nature was doubly important for its international significance and the fiscal freedom it generated, allowing authors to focus on their writing.
The petite author was in Galle where she spoke of the inspiration behind her book, a dark and lyrical tale that sees a group of people converge in the seaside town of Jarmuli.
Roy’s book grapples with the nature of religion, love and violence in the modern world. Sleeping on Jupiter was nominated for the Man Booker Prize 2015.
This year, well-known journalist Mark Tully chaired the five-member international jury panel which included Dennis Walder, Emeritus Professor of Literature at the Open University, UK, Karen Allman, a book seller and literary coordinator, and Syed Manzoorul Islam a Bangladeshi writer, translator, critic and academic.
Sri Lanka was represented by Neloufer de Mel, a senior professor of English at the University of Colombo. She has written extensively on society, culture and feminism.
Mark Tully, speaking on behalf of the jury panel, commented that Roy’s elegance, flair and readability while raising issues succinctly, cinched the book’s win.
“The South Asian setting is described faithfully and evocatively. Among the issues raised are the power of memory and myth, religious hypocrisy, sexuality, abuse and other forms of violence […] we believe this book will be a source of inspiration to other writers,” commented Tully.
The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature awards a prize of US $50,000 for the best work in fiction to an author from any ethnicity or nationality for writing which explores the South Asian region and its people.
The award ceremony which has been associated with the Jaipur Literature Festival over the past years, was held in Sri Lanka for the first time this year and aims to move to another location within the region, for its next edition.
Previous winners of the DSC Prize have included H.M. Naqvi, Jhumpa Lahiri and Jeet Thayil. Shehan Karunatilaka is the only Sri Lankan to have won since the prize’s inception.
A shortlist of six novels was announced at the London School of Economics in November last year. Writers Akhil Sharma, K.R. Meera (translated by J Devika), Mirza Waheed, Neel Mukherjee and Raj Kamal Jha were among the six shortlisted writers for this year’s prize.
Of the writers in the running, Roy, Meera and Jha were in Galle to hear who would take home the prize. Speaking at the ceremony, Premier Wickremesinghe stressed the need to revive the cultural efforts of the South Asian region and commended the efforts of the founders of the DSC Prize for its contributions to the literary field.
The sixth edition of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature received 74 entries from the South Asian region as well as UK, US, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
The prize encourages writing in regional languages and translations in an effort to amplify the conversation about South Asian Literature
(For an interview with Anuradha Roy earlier in the week at FGLF please see Plus Page 3)