Applause!

Just in case you missed it in our Twitter feed, where we sent out the news within minutes of the announcement, HS Narula, chairman of DSC, the Festival's title sponsor, announced a handsome new book prize.

The DSC South Asia Literary Prize will be awarded for the first time at next year's Jaipur Literature Festival, and will be worth US$ 50,000. Which takes it vaulting straight to the top of the prize stakes in this part of the world.*

Lord Meghnad Desai, star literary agent David Godwin, Urvashi Butalia, Nayantara Sehgal and Tina Brown will be among the advisors to the award, which will reward "writers of any ethnicity writing about south Asia and its diaspora." To be eligible, books must be original fiction written in English or translated into English, and published from April 1, 2009 to March 31, 2010, 

* The Crossword Book Awards offer Rs 300,000 per prize in its three categories; the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is Rs 100,000; the Man Asian Literary Prize is US$10,000 to the winning author and US$3,000 to the translator (if it is a translation), the Commonwealth Writers's Prize has £1,000 each for Best Book and Best First Book in each region, and, across regions, £10,000 for the overall Best Book and £5,000 for the Best First Book.