Delhi Noir contributor Uday Prakash is Jan Michalski Prize Finalist

Congratulations to Delhi Noir contributor Uday Prakash, whose novel, The Walls of Delhi, is a finalist for the Jan Michalski Prize for Literature!

From the Fondation Jan Michalski website:

The Jan Michalski Prize for Literature is attributed each year by the Foundation to crown a work of world literature. An original feature of the Prize is its multicultural nature. It is open to authors from the world over and is intended to contribute to their international recognition. The Prize will be awarded for works of fiction or non fiction, irrespective of the language in which it is written. The winner will receive an amount of CHF 50,000 [about US $53,815], offering the possibility of greater dedication to her or his art. The authors of short-listed works will be invited for a three-month period of residence in the Maison de l’Ecriture.

To make up the Jury, the Foundation has called on exceptional writers who are multilingual, selected for their knowledge of various literary genres, but particularly for their cultural openness.

Tarun J. Tejpal, a member of the jury, said the following about Prakash’s book:

This book is a reminder that the most authentic Indian literature is not being written in English (as is celebrated all over the world) but in Hindi and other indigenous languages. With fine irony and a deceptively light touch, Prakash undertakes to excavate the graveyard where the colonizers of the planet bury the colonized. On one side are money, power, machines fashioning the world to their convenience; and on the other the flotsam of the human race, sloshing around, trying to find some purchase–of food and roof and job–on the slippery slopes of the modern bazaar. With no trace of shrillness, no grandstanding, no moral flag-waving, Prakash scorches the deceptions and avarice of the elite, lays bare the essential inhumanity of men. His characters are memorable, their travails wrenching; his voice cosmopolitan, but located precisely on the street and at the sewer run-off.

The three stories in this book resonate off each other, in their themes and their concerns, and though they are all set in India they speak to anyone who has ever wondered at the awful schism that yawns at the heart of the human race.

The winner of the Prize will be announced in November 2013. The shortlisted titles are:

The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash
L’Aigle et le Dragon by Serge Gruzinski
The Colonel by Mahmoud Dowlatabadi
The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg
The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane

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Posted: Aug 6, 2013

Category: News | Tags: awards, Delhi Noir, Jan Michalski Prize, News, Noir Series, The Walls of Delhi, Uday Prakash