Lit Goes Large
Here’s the dope on the titles that will fight for India’s heftiest ($50,000) literary award — the DSC Prize — at the Jaipur Literary Festival between January 21 and 25
The Immortals (Picador India)
Amit Chaudhuri
Set in Bombay of the 1970s and early 1980s, it traces the history of two families: One bathed in corporate affluence and the other subsisting on its musical tradition. The book is an ordered tabulation of their unremarkable existence.
Atlas of Unknowns (Pocket Books)
Tania James
When 17-year-old Anju wins a scholarship to study art in New York, she embraces all that the US offers. But Anju harbours a guilty secret and when it is exposed she goes into hiding. Back home in Kerala, her sister Linno sets out to find her.
Home Boy (HarperCollins)
H.M. Naqvi
It is, at once, an immigrant’s tale, a mystery, a story of love and loss as well as a unique meditation on America and notions of collective identity. It announces the debut of an original, electrifying voice in contemporary fiction.
(This story appears in the 28 January, 2011 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
