Samaj Weekly Issue 328

22 20/12/2019 NEWS LITERATURE POLITICS FASHION ART & CULTURE KIDS RELIGION FILMS
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AMITABHA BAGCHI WINS THE DSC PRIZE
FOR SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE 2019
Pokhara, Nepal: Amitabha
Bagchi’s brilliant novel “Half The
Night Is Gone” has won the prestigious
DSC Prize for South Asian Literature
2019. The announcement was made at a
special Award Ceremony at the IME
Nepal Literature Festival today in the
picturesque city of Pokhara. Honorable
Mr Pradeep Gyawali, Minister for
Foreign Affairs of Nepal, along with
Surina Narula, co-founder of the DSC
Prize presented the winner’s trophy to
Amitabha Bagchi in an event attended
by key dignitaries, literary enthusiasts,
writers and media. The DSC Prize has
always encouraged diverse voices that
bring alive the layered nuances of
South Asian life, and Bagchi’s novel, a
post-colonial saga that unfolds over
three generations, adroitly explores
human relationships, and the intertwining
of fates and cultures in a thoroughly
Indian context. The novel’s amazing
attention to details, the inventive use of
language, and its memorable well
defined characters make it an outstanding
read.
The six shortlisted authors and novels
in contention for the DSC Prize this
year were Amitabha Bagchi: Half the
Night is Gone (Juggernaut Books,
India), Jamil Jan Kochai: 99 Nights in
Logar (Bloomsbury Circus,
Bloomsbury, India & UK, and Viking,
Penguin Random House, USA),
Madhuri Vijay: The Far Field (Grove
Press, Grove Atlantic, USA),
Manoranjan Byapari: There’s
Gunpowder in the Air (Translated from
Bengali by Arunava Sinha, Eka,
Amazon Westland, India), Raj Kamal
Jha: The City and the Sea (Hamish
Hamilton, Penguin Random House,
India), and Sadia Abbas: The Empty
Room (Zubaan Publishers, India)
The five member international jury
panel for the DSC Prize 2019 and the
shortlisted authors were present at the
event where the authors did a reading
from their shortlisted novels. The winner
announcement was well received
by the audience present at the IME
Nepal Literature where the best of
Nepali and South Asian literature were
on view. This is in line with the prize’s
vision to encourage literary talent in
various South Asian countries which it
has been doing by announcing the winner
in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, India and
Nepal over the last four years.
Jury Chair Harish Trivedi, speaking
on behalf of the jury said, “South Asia
is now perhaps more visible and more
omnipresent than ever before. There is
a South Asia at home and a South Asia
abroad and both inhabit a shared literary
space of writings originally in
English or translated into English. The
DSC Prize for South Asian Literature is
the only prize which encompasses nine
different countries in South Asia and
the diaspora, and this year we also
received entries from some writers
with no ethnic connection with South
Asia. For the five jury members located
in five different countries, reading
90 novels in 90 days was a transformative
experience. Over the months, we
arrived at a diverse and inclusive
longlist of 15 and a shortlist of 6 novels,
representing the polyphonic richness
of the region. It is out of this collective
literary churning that there has
emerged a winner whose work subsumes
many languages and sensibilities.”
Ajit Baral, Director of the IME
Nepal Literature Festival, made the
opening address and welcomed the DSC
Prize to Nepal and the city of Pokhara.
As part of the evening program, the 5
member international jury panel of the
DSC Prize was introduced, the shortlisted
authors read excerpts from their
books, and culminated with the trophy
being presented to Amitabha Bagchi,
the winner of the DSC Prize 2019.
Congratulating the winner, Surina
Narula, co-founder of the DSC Prize
said, “My heartiest congratulations to
Amitabha Bagchi for winning the DSC
Prize for South Asian Literature 2019
for his brilliant novel ‘Half The Night
Is Gone’. All the shortlisted books this
year deal with diverse and powerful
themes and there were three debut novels
and a book about Afghanistan. It is
a tough decision as always for the jury
to choose a winner from these exceptional
entries. We are delighted to be
invited to give the award this year in
Nepal and I hope this encourages more
publishers from Nepal to enter their
books for the prize next year. The DSC
Prize has now completed nine years
and it is heartening to see the increased
interest amongst readers across the
world in South Asian life and culture
through these books.”
The DSC Prize for South Asian
Literature 2019 was judged by a
diverse and distinguished five member
jury panel comprising eminent figures
drawn from the international literary
fraternity who have worked in or
around South Asian literature and
issues. This year’s international jury
panel included Harish Trivedi, (Jury
Chair) former Professor of English at
the University of Delhi who has written
extensively on colonial and post colonial
literature, Jeremy Tambling, former
Professor of Literature at the
University of Manchester with an interest
in present and past literatures, in
critical theory, and in film, Kunda
Dixit, Editor of the Nepali Times newspaper
in Kathmandu, and author of several
books on the South Asian region,
climate change and technology,
Carmen Wickramagamage, Professor
of English at the University of
Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, whose work has
focused on feminism, postcolonial theory,
and ‘Third World’ women writers,
and Rifat Munim, a bilingual writer,
essayist, and translator, and the literary
editor of Dhaka Tribune in Bangladesh,
with special interest in South Asian
English writing.
JURY CITATION FOR ‘HALF
THE NIGHT IS GONE’ BY
AMITABHA BAGCHI
The DSC Prize for South Asian
Literature 2019 goes to Amitabha
Bagchi for his novel ‘Half the Night is
Gone.’ This novel, written in English,
feels like a book written in an Indian
language, and has the authenticity and
the interiority of a work in
translation without in fact
being a translation. All subcontinental
novelists in
English since Raja Rao have
striven “to express in a language
that is not one’s own a
sensibility that is one’s own”,
and this novel evokes the
sensibility of not one but
three Indian languages:
Hindi, Urdu and Sanskrit. It
weaves together three parallel
stories, interrogating the
relationships between men
and women, fathers and sons,
masters and servants, and the
nation and the individual. It
is epic in scope, profound in
its exploration of class and
gender, and elegantly assured
in the way it infuses English
with Indian wit and wisdom
to achieve an unprecedented
commingling of different literatures
and cultures.
About the DSC Prize for
South Asian Literature:
The US $25,000 DSC
Prize for South Asian
Literature which was instituted
by Surina Narula and Manhad
Narula in 2010, is one of the most prestigious
international literary awards
specifically focused on South Asian
writing. It is a unique and coveted prize
and is open to authors of any ethnicity
or nationality as long as the writing is
about South Asia and its people. It also
encourages writing in regional languages
and translations, and the prize
money is equally shared between the
author and the translator when a translated
entry wins.
Now in its 9th year, the DSC Prize
has been successful in bringing South
Asian writing to a larger global audience
by rewarding and showcasing the
achievements of the authors writing
about this region. Past winners of the
prize have been H M Naqvi of
Pakistan, Shehan Karunatilaka of Sri
Lanka, Jeet Thayil and Cyrus Mistry
from India, American author of Indian
origin Jhumpa Lahiri, Anuradha Roy
from India, Anuk Arudpragasam of Sri
Lanka, and Jayant Kaikini along with
translator Tejaswini Niranjana of India
who won the prize last year.
In line with its South Asian essence,
the DSC Prize award ceremony is held
in various South Asian countries by
rotation. The winner of the DSC Prize
2016 was announced at the Galle
Literary Festival, Sri Lanka, the winner
of the DSC Prize 2017 was announced
at the Dhaka Literary Festival,
Bangladesh, the winner of the DSC
Prize 2018 was announced at the Tata
Steel Kolkata Literary Meet, India, and
this year the winner of the DSC Prize
2019 was announced at the IME Nepal
Literature Festival in Nepal.
About the IME Nepal Literature
Festival
The only international literature
festival in the country, the Nepal
Literature Festival was conceived as a
forum for fostering pluralities of
thoughts and ideas, tolerance, inclusiveness,
and literature. True to its
founding ethos, it has over the years
given space to diverse—often competing—ideas
and unheard voices. It has
been sensitive to the inclusion of
women and marginalized groups,
including Dalits, LGBTQI+ and
Madhesis. Started in 2011, the Festival
aspires to be a neutral venue where
writers, artists, filmmakers, singers,
and intellectuals from South Asia can
come together to discuss varied issues
pertinent to the times. The Festival has
seen the participation of writers from
South Asia and beyond, namely, Ned
Beaman, Mark Tully, Ned Beauman,
Mohammed Hanif, Vinod Mehta,
Carlo Pizzati, Shashi Tharoor,
Shobhaa De, Farah Ghuznavi, Amish
Tripathi, Uday Prakash, Ramachandra
Guha, Barkha Dutt, Namgay Zam,
Aunohita Mojumdar, Tishani Doshi,
Carlo Pizzati, Hartosh Bal Singh,
Matthieu Aikins, Prajwal Parajuly,
Anni Zaidi, etc.