New 2020 Shakti Bhatt Prize to Anand Teltumbde and Gautam Navlakha

For twelve years the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize has recognized and celebrated literature from the South Asian subcontinent, honouring writers from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and every corner of India.

Administered, judged, curated and funded solely by writers, the Prize is and will always be independent. It is beholden to no corporate sponsors.

In these twelve years, there has been a proliferation of prizes and first books have become a part of numerous shortlists. For these reasons, the First Book Prize will be discontinued and henceforth be known as the Shakti Bhatt Prize.

The 2020 Shakti Bhatt Prize is shared by Dr. Anand Teltumbde and Mr. Gautam Navlakha for their body of work.

Dr. Teltumbde is the author of more than two dozen books, including Dalits: Past, Present and Future, Republic of Caste and Radical in Ambedkar.
In April this year he was arrested in connection with the violence that took place during anniversary celebrations of the Bhima-Koregaon battle.
The award will be given to his wife, Rama Teltumbde, grand-daughter of BR Ambedkar, on his behalf.

Gautam Navlakha is a human rights activist and journalist. He retired as editorial consultant of the Economic & Political Weekly, and is a founding member of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights.
His areas of engagement range from justice in conflict zones, to workers' and peasants' rights, to the persecution of political prisoners. He is the author of Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion (Penguin India, 2012).
In April of this year he was arrested in connection with the Bhima-Koregaon case.

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.

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 2019: Jury

Announcing the judges for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2019:

Sonia Faleiro is a journalist and the author, most recently, of Beautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars (2010); her next book, The Good Girls: Love and Death in a Village in India, is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic/Bloomsbury.
Prayaag Akbar’s first novel Leila won the Crossword Jury Prize in 2018 and the Tata LitLive Award for Debut Fiction in 2017, and was developed into a series by Netflix. He is a Senior Fellow of Krea University.

Ruskin Bond wrote his first short story at the age of sixteen. Since then he has written more than five hundred stories, essays and novels, and won the Padma Bhushan, the Padma Shri and the Sahitya Akademi Prize. He lives in Mussoorie, a constant presence or character in his fiction.

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

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.

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.

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2017 Shortlist

Prayaag Akbar, Leila (Simon & Schuster)

Hirsh Sawhney, South Haven (HarperCollins)

Anuk Arudpragasam, The Story of a Brief Marriage (HarperCollins)

Sumana Roy, How I Became a Tree (Aleph Book Company)

Tripti Lahiri, Maid In India (Aleph Book Company)

Tejaswini Apte-Rahm, These Circuses that Sweep Through the Landscape (Aleph Book Company)

Author and translator Arshia Sattar and poet and novelist Jeet Thayil chose this year's Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2017 shortlist from forty-seven titles submitted for consideration.

Arshia Sattar writes

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is ten years old this year and even a quick glance at previous winners will show that the Prize has celebrated writing across genre, gender, age and nation. Our oldest winner so far was in his 70s, and the Prize has been awarded to Pakistanis, to writers of both fiction and non-fiction, to men and to women. It has been a pleasure to acknowledge the wealth and diversity of South Asian writing in this last decade and a privilege to spotlight new writing.

This year’s shortlist of books and writers continues our commitment to finely-crafted writing and sophisticated thinking.

Prayaag Akbar’s Leila is the heart-breaking story of a lost child and a shattered society. Entirely dystopic, it haunts not simply because it presents us with a terrifying future but because that portrait of unfreedom, inequality and brutality seems to already be part of our lived reality.

Sumana Roy’s How I Became a Tree is an exquisite meditation on a personal decision to step away from a life that seemed to have everything but time. Roy shares what she has learned about and from trees through gentle essays that explore the natural world and reflect upon the human condition in the Anthropocene Age.

Writing from the point of view of a young boy whose voice has not broken but whose heart has, Hirsh Sawhney’s South Haven tells the poignant story of an immigrant family, its men unable to cope with the death of their mother and wife. Father and sons drift away from each other as they seek solace in new people, new ideas and new activities. But things fall apart and the centre cannot hold. Sawhney relies on the pathos of his characters to reach the persistent melancholia that so often succeeds the sharp grief of bereavement.

Maid in India by Tripti Lahiri eerily echoes Prayaag Akbar’s fictional dystopia as she goes deep into the multiple worlds that domestic workers inhabit. Lahiri also examines the employment and training agencies that keep the systems that supply and demand human beings well-oiled, and provides, in lucid prose devoid of emotional rhetoric, a picture of a society that thrives on entrenched structures of inequality.

Anuk Arudpragasam’s novel A Brief History of a Marriage 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.

Tejaswini Apte-Rahm’s collection of short stories, These Circuses that Sweep Through the Landscape, is deceptively quiet in a literary world of noisy entries and exits. Alternately hyper and surreal, Apte-Rahm’s canvases are small. On them, her people and events are like ikons–they gleam with gilded details even as they occupy the darker recesses of contemporary life.

Together, this year’s books remind us that in an increasingly brutal and fragmented world, families, communities and societies no longer provide safety nets, that individuals often feel stranded on the brink of an abyss. And yet, it is through literature that we can search for each other, it is in writing that we can create meaning as a bulwark against the tides of untruth that thunder on our shores."

Judges Kamila Shamsie, Rohini Mohan and Margaret Mascarenhas will announce the winner in November.

This year’s judges

This year, we have an all-woman panel, a first for the tenth year of the prize.

Rohini Mohan won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2015, for her book The Seasons of Trouble (2014, Verso/Harper Collins), a non-fiction account of three people surviving the civil war in Sri Lanka. Rohini is an independent journalist writing on politics and human rights in South Asia, for publications including The New York Times, The Caravan, Al Jazeera, and The Hindu. She is based in Bangalore, India.

Kamila Shamsie is the author of seven novels, including Home Fire, which will be published in August 2017. Burnt Shadows has been translated into more than 20 languages and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, and A God in Every Stone was shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Three of her other novels (In the City by the Sea, Kartography, Broken Verses) have received awards from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’, she grew up in Karachi, and now lives in London.

Margaret Mascarenhas is a transnational novelist, essayist and poet of Indian, Native American and French origin whose work focuses on pushing the boundaries of race , gender, genre and resistance. She is the author of the diasporic novels Skin, set in colonial India and The Disappearance of Irene Dos Santos, set in Venezuela, where she grew up. She has published one volume of poetry and sketches, Triage — casualties of love and sex . She is currently working on a third novel , set partly in the Middle East, a collection of short stories and a second collection of poetry titled This is how you fix what is broken. She divides her time between Goa, India, and Ponte de Lima , Portugal.

The shortlist will be up in a few weeks and the judges’ decision will be out November-end.

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.

Announcing the judges for the 2016 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2016

Now in its ninth year, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is set to release its 2016 shortlist. The Shakti Bhatt Foundation has announced the three judges who will select the winner in November; authors Samanth Subramanian, Mahesh Rao and Janice Pariat.

Samanth Subramanian is a New Delhi-based writer and journalist. He has written, among other publications, for the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Guardian, Granta, Intelligent Life and Caravan. His first book, Following Fish: Travels Around the Indian Coast, won the 2010 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and was shortlisted for the Andre Simon Award. His second book, This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War, won the 2015 Crossword Non Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award and the Ondaatje Prize the same year.

Mahesh Rao is a novelist and short story writer. His fiction has been shortlisted for various awards, including the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. His work has appeared in publications like the New York Times, The Baffler, Caravan and Elle. His debut novel, The Smoke Is Rising, won the Tata First Book Award for fiction, and was shortlisted for the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize and the Crossword Prize. One Point Two Billion, his collection of short stories, was published in October 2015.

Janice Pariat is the author of Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories and Seahorse: A Novel. She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi (Indian National Academy of Letters) and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013 for Boats on Land. She studied English Literature at St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and History of Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Her work—including art reviews, cultural features, book reviews, fiction and poetry—has featured in a wide selection of national magazines and newspapers. Currently, she lives in New Delhi, India.

This year’s shortlist will be decided by poet and author Jeet Thayil, and author Arshia Sattar, who runs the Sangam House international writers' residency programme.

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 Priti Paul through the Apeejay Trust.

Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2016: call for entries

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is inviting entries for the 2016 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. In its ninth year, the prize is a cash award of 2 lakh rupees, and a trophy. Submissions in the following genres are invited: poetry, fiction, graphic novels, creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography and narrative journalism), and drama.

The deadline for publishers and individuals to send in first books is July 15, 2016. Books published between June 2015 and June 2016 are eligible. The winner will be announced in November and the prize presentation will take place in Delhi, December 2016.

Authors from the subcontinent are eligible but books must be published in India. (The cheque to a winning author outside India and elsewhere in the subcontinent will be given to his/her Indian publishers, or the author’s nominees in India.) Publications must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language. Vanity press publications are ineligible.

This year’s shortlist will be put together by poet and author Jeet Thayil, and author Arshia Sattar, who runs the Sangam House international writers' residency program. Three judges (to be announced) will pick the winning entry.

Books should be sent to the following addresses:
One copy to
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation,
C-6/36, First Floor, SDA,
New Delhi 110016

Two copies to:
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation,
011, Maangalya Residences,
6/1, Benson Cross Road,
Bangalore 560046

For further information, mail shaktibhattprize at gmail dot com.

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.

2015 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize - call for entries

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is inviting entries for the 2015 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. In its eighth year, the prize is a cash award of 2 lakh rupees, and a trophy. Submissions in the following genres are invited: poetry, fiction, graphic novels, creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography and narrative journalism), and drama.

The deadline for publishers and individuals to send in first books is July 15, 2015. Books published between June 2014 and June 2015 are eligible. The winner will be announced in November and the prize presentation will take place in Delhi, December 2015.

Authors from the subcontinent are eligible but books must be published in India. Publications must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language. Vanity press publications are ineligible.

This year’s shortlist will be put together by poet and author Jeet Thayil, and author Arshia Sattar, who runs the Sangam House international writers' residency program. Three judges (to be announced) will pick the winning entry.

Books (one copy each) should be sent to the following addresses:
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation, C-6/36, First Floor, SDA, New Delhi 110016;
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation, 011, Maangalya Residences, 6/1, Benson Cross Road, Bangalore 560046.

For further information, mail shaktibhattprize at gmail dot com.

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.

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.

2014 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize - call for entries

Entries invited for literary prize

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation is inviting entries for the 2014 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize. In its seventh year, the prize is a cash award of one lakh rupees, and a trophy.

The award covers poetry, fiction (including graphic novels), creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography, and narrative journalism), and drama.

The deadline for publishers and individuals to send in first books (no limit to the number of entries) is July 15, 2014. Books published between June 2013 to June 2014 are eligible. The winner will be announced in November and the prize presentation will take place in Delhi, December 2014.

Authors from the subcontinent are eligible but books must be published in India.

Publications must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language.

Books that have been published elsewhere and have already won prizes are eligible, though less likely to win. Vanity press publications are ineligible.

Books (2 copies) should be sent to the following address:
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation,
011, Maangalya Residences, 6/1, Benson Cross Road, Bangalore 560046.

For further information, contact shaktibhattprize at gmail dot com

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.

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)

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.

Judges announced for Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2012

Literary agent David Godwin, dancer, author and poet Tishani Doshi and author Basharat Peer will be the judges of the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize 2012.

In its fifth year, the prize is a cash award of one lakh rupees, and a trophy. Entries in the following genres were submitted: poetry, fiction (including graphic novels), creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography and narrative journalism), and drama.

A two-member advisory board will be short-listing 6 books published between June 1, 2011 and June 30, 2012, which will then be sent to the judges. The winner will be announced in the second half of November and the prize will be presented in December.

This year has seen a record number of 94 entries as opposed to last year's 66; the winner in 2011 was 79-year-old Jamil Ahmad for The Wandering Falcon.

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

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 2011 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize - Call for submissions

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation announces the 2011 SHAKTI BHATT FIRST BOOK PRIZE

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is a cash award of one lakh rupees. We invite entries in the following genres: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography, and narrative journalism) and drama.

A 2-member advisory board will shortlist 6 books published between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011. This year, the board includes poet and novelist Jeet Thayil, and writer and arts consultant Sanjay Iyer. The shortlisted books will be sent to the 2011 panel of judges: graphic novelist and illustrator Sarnath Bannerjee, writer and blogger Jai Arjun Singh, and novelist Palash Mehrotra.

The deadline for publishers/authors to send their entries is July 15, 2011. The winner will be announced in the second half of November. Prize presentation will take place in December.

Authors of Indian origin whose books have been published in India are eligible for the prize. Publications must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language. Books that have been published elsewhere and have already won prizes are eligible, though less likely to win. Vanity press publications are ineligible.

Books (3 copies) may be sent to the following address:
The Shakti Bhatt Foundation
8B Main Road
166/A Rajmahal Vilas Ext
Bangalore 560 080

Queries: shaktibhattprize AT gmail DOT com

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

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.

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

The 2010 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize - Call for submissions

The Shakti Bhatt Foundation announces
The 2010 Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize

In its third year, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize is a cash award of one lakh rupees. Entries in the following genres may be submitted: poetry, fiction (including graphic novels), creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography and narrative journalism) and drama. A 3-member advisory board will shortlist 6 books published between June 1, 2009 and June 30, 2010. This year, the board includes 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.

Authors from the subcontinent are eligible but books must be published in India. Publications must be in English or translated into English from an Indian language. Books that have been published elsewhere and have already won prizes are eligible, though less likely to win. Vanity press publications are ineligible.

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 First Book Prize 2009 - Award Ceremony

14th December, 2009, British Council, New Delhi

Photos by Kavi Bhansali