Lankan author’s maiden book shortlisted for DSC Prize
View(s):September 27, London: Sri Lankan writer Anuk Arudpragasam is on the shortlist for the prestigious DSC Prize for South Asian Literature with his first book ‘The Story of a Brief Marriage’ (Granta Books, UK).
The world’s literati had gathered at the renowned London School of Economics & Political Science as the eagerly awaited shortlist for the US $25,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017 was announced. Apart from Arudpragasm, the shortlisted authors hail from different backgrounds and geographies and include three Indian writers and one American writer based in India.
Anuk Arudpra-gasam at the Galle Literary Festival in January
The five shortlisted entries contending for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017 are:
Anjali Joseph: The Living (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, UK)
Anuk Arudpragasam: The Story of a Brief Marriage (Granta Books, UK)
Aravind Adiga: Selection Day (Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, India)
Karan Mahajan: The Association of Small Bombs (Chatto & Windus, UK & Viking, USA & Fourth Estate, HarperCollins, India)
Stephen Alter: In the Jungles of the Night (Aleph Book Company, India)
Born in Colombo, Arudpragasam is currently working towards a doctorate in philosophy at Columbia University. ‘The Story of a Brief Marriage’ is about Dinesh, a young man trapped on the frontlines between the Sri Lankan army and the Tamil Tigers for whom, desensitized to the horror all around him, life has been pared back to the essentials: eat, sleep, survive. All this changes when he is approached one morning by an older man who asks him to marry his daughter Ganga, hoping that victorious soldiers will be less likely to harm a married woman. For a few brief hours, Dinesh and Ganga tentatively explore their new and unexpected connection, trying to understand themselves and each other, until the war once more closes over them.
Describing Arudpragasam’s writing as “meditative, nuanced and powerful prose,” the judges said “this shattering novel marks the arrival of an extraordinary new literary voice.”
The shortlist was announced by Ritu Menon, along with the other four jury members – Senath Walter Perera, Steven Bernstein, Valentine Cunningham and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. The jury had earlier announced a longlist of 13 novels at the Oxford Bookstore in New Delhi in August 2017.
Speaking on the occasion, Ritu Menon, Chair of the jury commented, “After deliberating on the many exceptional qualities of the novels selected, and considering the disparities in our backgrounds, the jury was unanimous in its decision on the five shortlisted titles. All five display a remarkable skill in animating current universal preoccupations in unconventional idioms, and from a distinctively South Asian perspective.”
The jury will now deliberate on the shortlist over the next month and a half, and the winner of The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017 will be announced at a special ceremony at the Dhaka Literary Festival in Bangladesh on November 18 , 2017.