The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2019: short list

As it enters its twelfth year, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize continues to acknowledge literature from the many countries of the South Asian sub-continent. On our shortlist this year are one novel each from a Bangladeshi and a Pakistani writer. Despite the fact that our 2019 list comprises of five rather than six books, we are, once again, confident in the diversity of themes and genres it represents. Our selected books speak of origins and futures, of satirical masculinities and the continuing vulnerability of women in our society, of vaulting ambitions and the sweetness of dreams. Never flinching from confronting ugly truths or recognising the gossamer thread of hope, they provide a vivid commentary on South Asia’s social and political fissures, its unresolved anxieties and its contemporary concerns.

Goodbye Freddie Mercury by Nadia Akbar is set amongst the young and the restless of Lahore’s social elite where drugs, parties and even powerful political connections cannot provide an escape from the pervasive violence and rampant corruption that hang like a pall of dust over the landscape, all but suffocating a new generation’s aspirations and hopes for change.
Numair Atif Chowdhury’s Babu Bangladesh creates the biography of a national superhero who has lived through both his country’s bloody past and the threatening chaos of its imminent future. Although surreal and psychedelic, unconstrained by anything except Chowdhury’s febrile imagination, this roller-coaster of a novel wears its thrumming political heart on its sleeve.
Roshan Ali debuts with Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction, bringing a fresh new voice to the age-old search for the meaning of life. Cynical and utterly sincere by turns, Ali’s Ib remains an unremarkable boy who wanders close to the cusp of manhood as he considers such big questions as love and death from a distinctly 21st century urban Indian perspective.
No Nation for Women by Priyanka Dubey is a journalist’s uncompromising commitment to foreground stories of sexual violence against women in India. Dubey shows us that some of the most determined fights for justice come not from our media-saturated cityscapes but from the severely disenfranchised families of victims in rural areas. This is a timely reminder that the power to resist belongs to us all, it is both universal and democratic.
Tony Joseph’s Early Indians strides purposefully to the very centre of the battle for our history, collating evidence from genetics, archaeology and linguistics that strongly contests the version of our past being created by our current political dispensation. Joseph’s rigorous science writing can be one of the few weapons we have left against the so-called knowledge produced by ideology and prejudice.
As our democratic processes are brutally demolished and our voices of dissent are choked off, our public and private bookshelves can stand tall as spaces of resistance. Solidarities can still be created by the books that we write and read and share. This year’s shortlist is a shoutout to those spaces and solidarities.
Arshia Sattar
Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize Co-Curator

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2018: short list

We That Are Young, Preti Taneja, Penguin/Hamish Hamilton
Ants among Elephants, Sujatha Gidla, Harper Collins
Temporary People, Deepak Unnikrishnan, Penguin Books
Remnants of a Separation, Aanchal Malhotra, Harper Collins
The Sensational Life and Death of Qandeel Baloch, Sanam Maher, Aleph
How to Travel Light, Shreevatsa Nevatia, Penguin Books

In a world increasingly “broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls,” it’s unsurprising that this year’s Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize shortlist reflects the experience of the outsider, the one who does not fit because of sexuality, caste, class and gender and a hundred other real and imagined reasons.

This year’s judges, Githa Hariharan, Sampurna Chattarji and Raghu Karnad, will sift through some remarkable examples of such displacement.

Author Arshia Sattar, co-curator of the shortlist, writes:

The short stories in Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People train their lens on the lives of migrant workers in the Gulf countries. Unnikrishnan’s masterful control of both language and imagination allows him to shift planes with ease, placing the reader on a Moebius strip with a single surface where the real and the surreal are contiguous.

Sujata Gidla’s searing memoir Ants among Elephants blows the lid off any illusions we might have had about the diminishing importance of caste in the 21 st century, even in such aspirationally egalitarian spaces as the movements of the political and social Left. Gidla’s freedom lies in her escape from the existential destitution that such systemic discrimination can induce for Dalit castes in India.

In How to Travel Light, Shreevatsa Nevatia grabs us by the collar and forces us onto the rollercoaster of a life lived with bi-polar disorder. Along with Nevatia, we, too, must live the illness – its manic bursts of energy and ecstasy, its crippling lows of hospitals, drugs, doctors and diagnoses. But hope lies in the extended hand of friendship, the inclusion of the outsider, however different s/he may be.

Preti Taneja’s novel We That Are Young sweeps through the lives of three daughters who stand to inherit their increasingly eccentric father’s fortune. A bastard son makes a tentative return to this family of wealth and power and is exposed to the corruption of mind, body and soul within our country’s social elite, an elite never answerable for its crimes simply because it is protected by money.

Remnants of a Separation explores personal histories of Partition through treasured family objects and heirlooms. Aanchal Malhotra put her tools as an historian away and with immense gentleness and compassion elicits memories of homes left behind. Oral narratives of world-changing events remind us that whether a refugee or a migrant, those who are wrenched from their homes always live as exiles.

Sanam Maher’s The Sensational Life and Death of Qandeel Baloch is a testimony to the short, incandescent and courageous life of this Pakistani social media personality, murdered for the family’s honour by her brother. Through the story of Qandeel’s life and death, Maher shows us what it means to be a woman who defies convention in a patriarchal society.

As the 21 st century settles into a morass of prejudice, hatred and violence against the perceived Other, it is writers who will remind us of the essential humanity that we all share, however different the Other may look or feel or behave. Writers may not be able to change the world, but they can help us mourn for those that have been vilified, ostracised and killed. This year’s shortlisted books are verses in the elegy that is slowly but surely being composed for all those whom we don’t even know we have lost.

The shortlist was chosen by Sattar (who runs the Sangam House international writers' residency programme) and writer Jeet Thayil. The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is a cash award of 2 lakh rupees, and a trophy. It is funded by the Shakti Bhatt Foundation. The judges will announce the winner in November.

2016 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize: short list

This year’s shortlist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize reminds us that the diaspora is writing hard and writing well. Four of our selected writers live and work outside the sub-continent. But their exceptional work is counter-balanced by equally noteworthy books written within India. All the books this year should make us reconsider what we think we know but have either forgotten or not acknowledged: the long (and often sinister) shadows of particular events and people, the individual lives nestled inside large histories, lives that shimmer on the margins of our vision and as always, the darkness hidden inside families.

Manu S Pillai’s The Ivory Throne literally mines the treasure troves of history. He finds the lonely women behind the dazzling jewels that stud the persons and temples of the erstwhile rulers of Travancore and reminds us that what we call history is the lived life of another, separated from us in time but not in temperament.

Madhu Gurung’s The Keeper of Memories stays true to its evocative title and through remembered lives, legends, rites and rituals, infuses the historical migration of the Gorkhas into north-eastern India with a keen though entirely unsentimental family intimacy.

Sophia Khan’s Yasmeen also searches the darker corners of loneliness within a family. Cradled in the routine of the quotidian, there are so many words unsaid, so many smiles that never reach the eyes, so many tears that splash into cups of coffee that seeking answers in the past does not always provide comfort.

Nisid Hajari’s Midnight’s Furies reveals the underbelly of India’s cataclysmic Partition through private letters, official communiques, personal relationships and bureaucratic inertia. Hajari shows that our understanding of the past must be periodically refreshed if we are to carry its lessons meaningfully into the present.

Akshay Mukul’s Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India masterfully details how a small regional press and a determined individual ideologue can influence the mind-set of a nation, reconstruct a religion and seed the politics of separatism that flowers nearly a century later.

The short stories in Kanishk Tharoor’s Swimmer Among the Stars are testament to the fact that for a new generation of internationalised writers, the world truly is their oyster. Story traditions, languages, histories and memories from every corner of the globe are the nacre that cover the grains of sand and smooth them into pearls.

All our books this year are pearls in that most marvelous of all oceans, the ocean of story.

Arshia Sattar

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The short list

Manu S Pillai for The Ivory Throne

Madhu Gurung for The Keeper of Memories

Sophia Khan for Yasmeen

Nisid Hajari for Midnight’s Furies

Akshay Mukul for Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India

Kanishk Tharoor for Swimmer Among the Stars

The winner will be announced in November.

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize: the 2014 short list

The shortlist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2014 has been announced. In its seventh year, the prize money has been increased to Rs 2 lakhs with support from Priti Paul and the Apeejay Trust.

The six books in contention for the trophy and cash prize are:

A Bad Character by Deepti Kapoor (Hamish Hamilton Penguin India)

The Scatter Here Is Too Great by Bilal Tanweer (Random House India)

The Vanishing Act by Prawin Adhikari (Rupa)

a cool, dark place by Supriya Dravid (Random House India)

The Competent Authority by Shovon Chowdhury (Aleph)

The Smoke Is Rising by Mahesh Rao (Random House India)

The selected books were drawn from yet another strong pool which attests to the vibrancy of the subcontinent's literary culture; three books have emerged from metropolitan India, one from a smaller Indian city, one from urban Pakistan and one from rural Nepal.

The Shakti Bhatt Prize Advisory Committee states: “A Bad Character and a cool, dark place are novels of growing up in circumstances and environments that are idiosyncratic, and often fraught with danger. The Vanishing Act and The Scatter Here Is Too Great bring political concerns and socio-economic realities to the fore while The Smoke Is Rising aims its lens at extremely local politics. The Competent Authority is a sharp satire set in an alarmingly recognisable future.

“Overall, the Shakti Bhatt Prize shortlist confirms that the evolving ethos of South Asian literature throws up many commonalities while retaining a strong sense of place.”

This year's judges are authors Amit Chaudhuri, Aatish Taseer and Mridula Koshy (2009 winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize).

The winner will be announced in November 2014.

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Priti Paul, director of the Apeejay Surrendra Group and the force behind the Oxford Bookstore chain, has come aboard as a major benefactor to the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. Her financial contribution through the Apeejay Trust makes this seventh year of the award especially notable as the prize money will now be Rs 2 lakh for the winning book. While Paul has pledged her involvement for the next few years, the Foundation hopes that more individuals will come forward to boost the work of subcontinent authors.

No stranger to altruism, Paul's Apeejay Anand Children's Library in Kolkata has already won the Duke of Edinburgh Prize for Social Service.

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2013: short list

Announcing the shortlist for the 2013 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.
The six books in contention for this year’s cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh and trophy are:

Boats on Land

by Janice Pariat

Vintage Books Random House India

India Becoming

by Akash Kapur

Penguin Viking

The King’s Harvest by Chetan Raj Shreshta (Aleph)

The Wildings

by Nilanjana Roy

Aleph

Foreign

by Sonora Jha 

Vintage Books Random House India

a pleasant kind of heavy and other stories

by aranyani 

Aleph

Writer and arts consultant Sanjay Iyer and poet and novelist Jeet Thayil selected the six titles from a list of seventy-four. “Arguably, this is one of the strongest shortlists in the prize’s history,” said Iyer. “The books represent a variety of genres as well as concerns, and the advisory board recognised the quality of books published in India by Indian authors living elsewhere. The stories and non-fictions take us from the far reaches of Meghalaya and Sikkim, through the length and breadth of India to the whimsical universe of street cats in a neighbourhood in New Delhi.”

Boats on Land and Foreign explore socio-economic realities in Meghalaya and Vidharba respectively, through poignant and moving fictional lenses. India Becoming has a sweeping canvas that explores changing lives through an important work of non-fiction. The King’s Harvest is two novellas that create magic out of the particularities of Sikkim. aranyani is the pseudonymous author of a pleasant kind of heavy and other stories, classic and classy literary erotica set in a South Indian milieu. The Wildings is a startling narrative in which the characters are street cats in Delhi’s Nizamuddin East.

The judges of the 2013 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize are poet and novelist Meena Kandasamy, author and professor Sunil Khilnani and novelist Niven Govinden.

 The winner will be announced in November, 2013.

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize short list announced

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation has announced its short list for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2012.

Long list judges, poet/author Jeet Thayil and writer/arts consultant Sanjay Iyer, sifted through a record 96 books to come up with the final six.

Tamasha in Bandargaon by Navneet Jagannathan (Tranquebar)

The Purple Line by Priyamvada Purushottam (HarperCollins)

The King in Exile by Sudha Shah (HarperCollins)

The Inexplicable Unhappiness of Ramu Hajjam by Taj Hassan (Hachette)

Taj Mahal Foxtrot by Naresh Fernandes (Roli Books)

Calcutta Exile by Bunny Suraiya (HarperCollins)

The short-listed books will be sent to the 2012 panel of judges: literary agent David Godwin, poet and novelist Tishani Doshi, and author Basharat Peer. The winner will be announced in the second half of November and the prize will be presented in December. Last year's winner was Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon.

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is a non-profit trust. It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages. For further information, mail shaktibhattprize AT gmail DOT com. The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is also on Facebook.

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize - Shortlist

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation has released its shortlist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2010.
The six books are:
Home Boy, by H M Naqvi
The House on Mall Road, by Mohyna Srinivasan
Songs of Blood and Sword, A Daughter's Memoir, by Fatima Bhutto
The Wish Maker, by Ali Sethi
Dehi Calm, by Vishwajyoti Ghosh
Following Fish, by Samanth Subramanian

In its third year, the prize is a cash award of one lakh rupees and a trophy. The genres covered are poetry, fiction (including graphic novels), creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography and narrative journalism) and drama. The 3-member advisory board this year included journalist Anil Nair, IFA programme executive Sanjay Iyer and poet Jeet Thayil.

The shortlisted books will be sent to the 2010 panel of judges; they are playwright Mahesh Dattani, writer and surgeon Kalpana Swaminathan and novelist Ruchir Joshi.
The winner will be announced in the second half of November and the prize will be presented in December.

Last year's winner was Mridula Koshy for If It Is Sweet.

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is a non-profit trust. It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages. For further information, mail shaktibhattprize AT gmail DOT com

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize - Shortlist

Announcing the shortlist for the inaugural 2008 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.

The judges, William Dalrymple, Kamila Shamsie and Samit Basu, will pick a winner from seven books that made it to the shortlist this year. In Search of a Future: The Story of Kashmir by David Devadas. Kari by Amruta Patil. A Reluctant Survivor by Sridala Swami. The Music Room by Namita Devidayal. White Tiger by Aravind Adiga. A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif. Smoke and Mirrors, An Experience of China by Pallavi Aiyar.

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is the only Indian book prize that honours a first book. By awarding a cash prize of Rs. 1 lakh, the prize aims to bring attention to deserving books of any genre by first-time authors. As a measure of the timeliness of this prize, there were more than two dozen entries this year, proof of the depth and quality of new writing in the country.