The shortlist of Vodafone-Crossword Book Awards 2008- India's biggest literary award- is star-studded.
“The Enchantress
of Florence” by Salman Rushdie, “Sea of Poppies” by Amitabh Ghosh, “Unaccustomed Earth” by Jhumpa Lahiri, “Past Continuous” by Neel Mukherjee and “Escape” by Manjula Padmanabhan are the fictions
shortlisted for the Vodafone-Crossword Book Award 2008, announced a panel comprising publisher-writer Urvashi Butalia, authors Mani Shankar Mukherjee and Namita Devidayal and founder of Crosswords Bookstore R. Sriram in the capital Thursday.
“This is the first time we are announcing the Vodafone-Crossword Book Award 2008 in New Delhi. We are proud to have brought at least one of phases of the awards to the capital, considering that the city has given birth to so many literary geniuses,” Chandrashekhar Navalkar , CEO Crossword Bookstores, said.
The awards will be given to the winners July 23 at the Nehru Auditorium in Mumbai. Each award carries a cash prize of Rs 300,000, a trophy and a citation. In the case of the Indian language fiction translation category, the author and the translator shares the prize money.
The shortlists in the non-fiction category includes “Curfewed Nights” by Basharat Peer, “Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country” by Sudeep Chakravarti, “Smoke & Mirrors” by Pallavi Aiyar, “The Last Jews of Kerala” by Edna Fernandes and the “The Women of Mahabharata” by Chaturvedia Badrinath.
The shortlisted books in translation category includes Dissonance and Other Stories by K.S. Subtamanian, Manto- Selected Stories by Aatish Taseer, T'TA Professor by Ira Pande and The Wind from the Hills by Prema Jayakumar.
The shortlisted nominees were selected by a panel of judges from a longlist of 176 entries submitted by publishers.
Vodafone and Crossowrds have also instituted a special “Popular Award” offering readers the opportunity to vote (via sms) for their favourite book from the shortlisted books. The winner will given a prize of Rs 100,000 and a trophy.
The eligibility criteria for the award includes that entries must be works of prose fiction, excluding teenage and children fiction, the entries must be either full-lenth novels or collections of short stories, they must be original works in English and the authors must be persons of Indian origins.
“The role of the awards is not just recognising the authors. It is almost like the Oscars. We want to take contemporary Indian literature to a new level and involve people,” said Namita Devidayal, winner of the award in 2007 for her her work of fiction, The Music Room.
Defending the decision for the SMS vote for the most popular book, founder of Crosswords Bookstores, R. Sriram said that it was easiest way to “ensure maximum participation, access and awareness about the books and the awards because nearly 400 million people in Indian owned mobile phones”.
The announcements were preceded by an hour-long intercation between publishers, writers and the Vodafone-Crossword panel at the India Habitat Centre.