Tony Joseph wins Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2019

Tony Joseph’s Early Indians: The Story of Our Ancestors and Where We Came From is the winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2019.

Early Indians tells the story of the people of South Asia through research in six disciplines, including path-breaking DNA evidence. It puts to rest the ugly debates about the ancestry of modern Indians by revealing an undeniable truth: we are all migrants, we are all mixed.

In its twelfth year, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize continues to celebrate extraordinary new writing in all genres. Administered, judged, curated and funded by writers, the Prize is and will always be entirely independent, and beholden to no corporate sponsors.

This year’s judges chose from a shortlist of five books:
Babu Bangladeshi, Numair Atif Choudhury (Harper Collins)
No Nation for Women, Priyanka Dubey (Simon & Schuster)
Goodbye Freddie Mercury, Nadia Akbar (Penguin Random House)
Early Indians, Tony Joseph (Juggernaut Books)
Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction, Roshan Ali (Penguin Random House)

Judges Sonia Faleiro and Prayaag Akbar said:

Early Indians is a remarkable exploration of the origins of the first humans who occupied the Indian subcontinent, bringing together a wealth of research from population genetics, archaeology, social history, biology, linguistics and other fields that are proving deeply interconnected.
Tony Joseph’s breadth of reading helps him combine insights from older studies of the topic with the latest research, resulting in a deft, compelling and accessible narrative that does not lack in rigour. As the question of origin becomes, increasingly, a tool of politics, Joseph’s book serves as a vital corrective to those who seek to simplify this most complex of subjects.
A triumph of ambition, clarity, and style, Early Indians was our unanimous choice as the winner for this year’s Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.

Ruskin Bond was unable to participate in this year’s judging process.

Sujatha Gidla wins Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2018

Sujatha Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India (Harper Collins) is the winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2018.

Sujatha Gidla was raised in the Dalit community of Kazipet, a small town in Telengana. After high school she enrolled in a Master’s program in physics. She worked as a researcher in the department of applied physics at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, then moved to the United States at the age of 26. She is currently employed as a conductor on the New York City subway system.

This year’s panel of judges, Sampurna Chattarji, Raghu Karnad and Githa Hariharan chose Sujatha Gidla’s Ants Among Elephants from a shortlist of six “because of its urgency, its revelations and its understated but seamless match of form with content.”

The other books on the 2018 shortlist were:
We That Are Young, Preti Taneja (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton)
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)

The judges said:

“It is a marvel how, with so little friction or strain, Ants absorbs readers into undramatized lives of poverty, patriarchy, and rebellion, and the encounter with subaltern Communism. But quite apart from the rarity and necessity of the subject—Dalit lives—the book is admirable for its clean skill and technical execution. With no authorial flourishes, it allows the story's innate passion and gravitas to display themselves.

“Ants is a book that teaches, reveals, reminds and remembers. It bears witness, it listens and asks to be listened to; with all these qualities in mind, we'd like to recommend it for this year's Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.”

While announcing the shortlist in August, co-curator Arshia Sattar wrote: “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 21st 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.”

About the 2018 judges

Githa Hariharan has written novels, short fiction and essays over the last three decades. Her work includes The Thousand Faces of Night which won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 1993, the short story collection The Art of Dying, the novels The Ghosts of Vasu Master, When Dreams Travel, In Times of Siege and Fugitive Histories, and a collection of essays entitled Almost Home: Cities and Other Places. She is one of the founders of the Indian Writers Forum. For more on this Delhi-based author and her work, visit githahariharan.com

Raghu Karnad is a writer and journalist, and co-founder of theWire.in. His book Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War (2015) was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar and shortlisted for the UK PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize for historical non-fiction in 2016. He has been editor of Time Out Delhi and written for Granta, The New York Times, The Financial Times, n+1, and Caravan magazine.

Sampurna Chattarji is a poet, fiction writer and translator. Her fifteen books include her poetry titles Absent Muses, The Scorpion, and Space Gulliver: Chronicles of an Alien; the novels Rupture and Land of the Well; a short-story collection about Bombay/Mumbai, Dirty Love, and a translation of Joy Goswami’s Selected Poems. She has co-authored Elsewhere Where Else/ Lle Arall Ble Arall with the Welsh poet Eurig Salisbury and is currently Poetry Editor of The Indian Quarterly. You can find her online at sampurnachattarji.wordpress.com and on Twitter @ShampooChats

Anuk Arudpragasam’s The Story of a Brief Marriage wins the 2017 prize

Anuk Arudpragasam’s novel The Story of a Brief Marriage has won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2017.

A native of Colombo, his work, according to shortlist judge Arshia Sattar, “presents the civil war in Sri Lanka like never before. Writing from within the debris of Tamil lives in prose that can pierce your heart, Arudpragasam’s protagonists find dignity as they piece together strategies of survival. The story is about the human spirit in the most desperate of times. It sings not as testament of glory but as a dirge of despair.

Judges Kamila Shamsie, Rohini Mohan and Margaret Mascarenhas were unanimous in their decision.

“Anuk Arudpragasam has written an extraordinary novel that is timely, timeless and universal in its depiction of the possibility of tenderness and love blossoming in the midst of the mind-numbing carnage, suffering and horror that is war. The Story of a Brief Marriage is mesmerizing from the first paragraph, and remains delicately poised between life and death from beginning to end,” said Mascarenhas.

Shamsie added, “It’s an exceptional accomplishment for any writer - for a debut writer it’s near miraculous.”

Mohan, winner of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2015, for her own Sri Lanka-based novel The Seasons of Trouble, said, “Anuk has taken what is actually a sliver of a story, the briefest of moments, and suffused it with meaning. His spare, meditative writing lets the pain and delirium of conflict unfold, sometimes just through an injured bird.” 

Author and translator Sattar and poet and novelist Jeet Thayil chose this year’s Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize shortlist from forty-seven titles submitted for consideration.

Rohini Mohan wins Shakti Bhatt prize

Rohini Mohan’s The Seasons of Trouble has won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2015. “The shortlist this year was diverse and spectacular, but we unanimously agreed to award the prize to Rohini Mohan,” said judge Samhita Arni, who along with authors Mohammed Hanif and Krys Lee, chose the winner.

Arni added: “Mohan’s book is the stark, brutal, often unsparing portrait of three desperate lives, struggling to navigate the realities and brutalities of war and peacetime in Sri Lanka. The Seasons of Trouble is more than just a meticulously researched work on the Sri Lankan conflict; Mohan’s skillfully-woven and structured narrative testifies to her considerable talent as a storyteller. The careful, deliberate way in which she withholds and later reveals information, her vividly-drawn characters and situations, combine to create a gripping reading experience. The Seasons of Trouble is simultaneously compassionate yet critical, emotionally evocative yet objective.”

This year's shortlist for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize had shown more variety than ever before, straddling fiction, non-fiction and the graphic novel. The categories were strongly represented by younger and older voices that reached for the story behind the story, fully exploring the possibilities of both meta-narrative and speculation.

Author Arshia Sattar, co-curator of the shortlist along with poet and writer Jeet Thayil, had noted how The Seasons of Trouble “presented us with the devastation of the human soul which is the inevitable consequence of any conflict”. The prize ceremony will be held in New Delhi, December 22 at the Max Mueller Bhavan.

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 and the Apeejay Trust.

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2015 Shortlist
• Indra Das, The Devourers
• Saskya Jain, Fire Under Ash
• Raghu Karnad, The Farthest Field
• Rohini Mohan, The Seasons of Trouble
• Bharath Murthy, The Vanished Path
• Shahid Siddiqui, The Golden Pigeon

About the judges

Samhita Arni is the author and illustrator of The Mahabharata - A Child's View. In collaboration with Moyna Chitrakar, she created the New York Times bestselling graphic novel Sita's Ramayana. Her third book, The Missing Queen, was published in 2013. Samhita was a screenwriter on the feature film Good Morning Karachi and worked as the head scriptwriter on The Defenders, a TV show in Kabul, Afghanistan. She was the 2014 writer-in-residence at the FIND - India Europe Foundation for New Dialogues. Earlier this year, she was a British Council - Charles Wallace India Trust Writing Fellow.

Mohammed Hanif has written two novels, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti and A Case of Exploding Mangoes, which won the inaugural Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize in 2008. Hanif has also written a pamphlet The Baloch Who Is Not Missing And Others Who Are.

Krys Lee is the author of the short story collection Drifting House. She is the recipient of the 2014-2015 Rome Prize fellowship in literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2012 Story Prize Spotlight Award, and a finalist for the 2012 BBC International Story Prize. Forthcoming publications include her first novel as well as a translation of Young-ha Kim’s novel I Hear Your Voice. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Yonsei University, Underwood International College.

Bilal Tanweer wins 2014 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize

Lahore-based author Bilal Tanweer has won the 2014 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize for his novel The Scatter Here Is Too Great (Random House India).

In its seventh year, the prize money has been increased to Rs 2 lakhs with support from Priti Paul and the Apeejay Trust.

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

On behalf of the judges, Taseer said: “The Scatter Here Is Too Great is that rarest of rare things: a novel whose form is a near perfect expression of its content. Karachi’s violence, its desolation, its dirt and phantasmagoria, are not merely represented; they inspire the shape of this jolting, fragmentary, darkly kaleidoscopic novel. It is part of Bilal Tanweer’s promise that he can leave so much unsaid, that his negative spaces speak as eloquently as they do. And, in the end, the reader is left with all that he needs to know—a deep and inconsolable sense of unease.”

Tanweer, born and raised in Karachi, has published fiction, poetry and translation in various international journals. In 2011, he was selected as a Granta New Voice.

Speaking for the Shakti Bhatt Foundation, Sanjay Iyer said, "With The Scatter Here Is Too Great the Prize is now clearly established as a pan-South Asian award. Completely independent juries have awarded three of the seven Shakti Bhatt awards to English language books by non-Indian writers. Mohammed Hanif from Pakistan won in 2008, as did the late Jamil Ahmad in 2011 at the age of 78 - surely the oldest person in history to win a first book prize.

"Bilal Tanweer's book underlines the crucial importance of literature in our larger cultural landscape. The Scatter Here Is Too Great balances the universality of existential torment with the often horrifying nitty-gritty realities of its location, Karachi. The book is disturbing, but frequently hints at catharsis. We wish Bilal Tanweer well as his promising career unfolds.”

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The six books shortlisted for the 2014 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize were:
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 award function will take place at 7.30pm, Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi, December 2, 2014.

Naresh Fernandes's Taj Mahal Foxtrot wins the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2012

Naresh Fernandes has won the 2012 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize for Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay's Jazz Age, an account of the city's thriving music scene between the 30s and 60s.

His appearance on the shortlist was not without drama. Fernandes is the co-author of Bombay Then and Mumbai Now, a historical narrative, and co-editor of Bombay Meri Jaan. Could this then be considered a first book?

Longlist judges, poet/author Jeet Thayil and writer/arts consultant Sanjay Iyer, sifted through a record 96 books to come up with the final six. Thayil said in a note: “Bombay Meri Jaan was co-edited by Fernandes, so it doesn't count. Bombay Then, Mumbai Now was billed as being co-authored, but Fernandes only wrote an essay. It's a coffee-table book of photos. Would it have been eligible for a first-book prize? Yes, but the photographer would have been the author. Technically (and intuitively), Taj Mahal Foxtrot is Fernandes' first book.”

The shortlisted works were sent to the 2012 panel of judges: literary agent and author David Godwin, poet, dancer and novelist Tishani Doshi, and author Basharat Peer. Doshi says, “We unanimously agree that Naresh Fernandes should win for Taj Mahal Foxtrot. This year's shortlist for the Shakti Bhatt Prize was strong and diverse, ranging from an account of the fall of the last King of Burma to a contemporary exploration of womanhood in Chennai. We decided on Taj Mahal Foxtrot, not just because of the original subject matter, but also because of the huge talent that is Naresh Fernandes. He writes with warmth, humour and a great deal of perception about a city he clearly loves.”

The prize will be presented on December 20 at the British Council Auditorium, New Delhi. Last year's winner was Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon.

2012 SBFBP Shortlist
1. Tamasha in Bandargaon by Navneet Jagannathan (Tranquebar)
2. The Purple Line by Priyamvada Purushottam (HarperCollins)
3. The King in Exile by Sudha Shah (HarperCollins)
4. The Inexplicable Unhappiness of Ramu Hajjam by Taj Hassan (Hachette)
5. Taj Mahal Foxtrot by Naresh Fernandes (Roli Books)
6. Calcutta Exile by Bunny Suraiya (HarperCollins)

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2011 - Winner

First-time author, 78, wins Shakti Bhatt prize

Jamil Ahmad has won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2011 for his book The Wandering Falcon, published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books.





The Wandering Falcon had very strong competition from the other five titles on the shortlist, especially Shehan Karunatilaka's Chinaman and Aman Sethi's A Free Man. But the judges, graphic novelist and illustrator Sarnath Banerjee, writer and blogger Jai Arjun Singh, and short story writer Palash Mehrotra, felt there was a quality in The Wandering Falcon that could not be denied.

“The shortlist was a very strong one to begin with,” Singh said, “and the final decision wasn't easy, especially because these six books covered a range of themes and writing styles — it felt like a pity that they had to be in competition against each other. But the jury members are all happy with the final choice: 78-year-old Jamil Ahmad is probably among the oldest writers ever to win a First Book prize, and it's a well-deserved one.

“The Wandering Falcon is extraordinary for its intimate chronicling of the lives and struggles of the tribespeople who have long inhabited the borders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran — people whose codes of honour and discipline have repeatedly been run over by a rapidly modernising world. Ahmad creates empathy without excessively romanticising an old way of life. His prose has a quiet, unshowy beauty and he shows a talent for pure storytelling that would be the envy of many far more experienced novelists.”

Born in Jalandhar, Ahmad was a member of the civil service in Pakistan. He lives in Islamabad with his wife Helga Ahmad, an environmentalist and social worker, who was awarded the Fatima Jinnah Gold Medal in 2007.

Ahmad wins one lakh in prize money along with a trophy. The award ceremony will be held at 7 pm, 21st December 2011 at the British Council Auditorium, New Delhi.

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Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2011 shortlist:
A Free Man — Aman Sethi — Random House India
The Truth About Me — Revathi — Penguin Books
The Collaborator — Mirza Waheed — Penguin Viking
The Wandering Falcon — Jamil Ahmad — Hamish Hamilton
R.D.Burman The Man, The Music — Anirudha Bhattacharjee & Balaji Vittal — HarperCollins
Chinaman — Shehan Karunatilaka — Random House India

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Last year's winner was Samanth Subramanian for Following Fish. In 2009, Mridula Koshy's If It is Sweet won, and in 2008, it was Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

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The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is a non-profit trust. It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages.

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For further information, mail shaktibhattprize AT gmail DOT com

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2010 - Winner

Following Fish wins Shakti Bhatt prize

Samanth Subramanian's debut book Following Fish has won the 2010 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize.

Currently Deputy Editor at Mint, the New Delhi-based business newspaper, Subramanian has an undergraduate degree in journalism from Penn State University and a Master's in international relations from Columbia.

The six books in this year's shortlist were Homeboy by HM Naqvi; 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, and Delhi Calm by Vishwajyoti Ghosh. But the judges (playwright Mahesh Dattani, writer and surgeon Kalpana Swaminathan and novelist Ruchir Joshi) unanimously agreed on Following Fish.


“A delightful read, adventurous and unabashedly fun,” they said. “As Samanth Subramanian chases fish curry round coastal India, his instinct for the apt word and the telling phrase keeps the narrative taut. The book is full of colourful personalities – Subramanian brings us in close contact with people who charm and sometimes dismay, and each encounter seduces us with a new anecdote or a new dish. Comic, and picaresque, with many surprise nettings of wisdom, Following Fish is a sparkling debut by a talented writer.”

In its third year, the prize is a cash award of one lakh rupees and a trophy.

The award function will be held at the British Council, New Delhi, December 10 at 7.30pm.

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2009 - Winner

Delhi-based Mridula Koshy’s remarkable collection of short stories If It is Sweet (Westland-Tranquebar) is the winner of the 2009 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. She receives Rs 1 lakh and a trophy which will be presented by author/television anchor Sagarika Ghosh in New Delhi on December 14, 2009 at the British Council.

The other shortlisted titles this year were:

Arzee the Dwarf, Chandrahas Choudhury (HarperCollins); Hotel at the End of the World, Parismita Singh (Penguin); Eunuch Park, Palash Krishna Mehrotra (Penguin); Baulsphere, Mimlu Sen (Random House), and Atlas of Impossible Longing, Anuradha Roy (Picador).

The 2009 panel of judges was novelist Rana Dasgupta, editor Mukund Padmanabhan and writer/film-maker Arshia Sattar. Last year's winner was Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif for A Case of Exploding Mangoes.

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is a non-profit trust set up by the late writer/editor's family to keep her memory alive. It wishes to reward first-time authors of all ages.

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2008 - The Winner

Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif's A Case of Exploding Mangoes (Random House) was the winner of the inaugural Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2008. (The call for entries; the short list.)

MJ Akbar announced the winner at the British Council, New Delhi, on December 2, 2008. The announcement was followed by a reception (pictures below).

Reports: The Indian Express, DNA, The New Yorker

Anita Roy & Urvashi Butalia

Meenakshi Reddy & Rajni George

M J Akbar

Mohammed Hanif

Mohammed Hanif & MJ Akbar

Samit Basu, Meenakshi Reddy, Rajni George

Sarnath Bannerjee, Lesley Estevez, Mridula Susan Koshy

Sheela Bhatt & Neelam Gupta