It’s the world’s richest literary award, next only to the Nobel.Theprize-winning writer scoops a staggering £80,000 (IR£ 1,00,000). impac, Dublin’sfive-year-old international literary prize for the best English novel published anywherein the world, has received 99 nominations this year from 200 public libraries. Alas, noneof our Indo-Anglian whizlits are in the fray, but Amit Chaudhury will be one of the fivejudges for this year’s award to be announced in June. Amit, usually too busy writingto read much, ended up reading more novels in the last few months than he’s read inyears. But it was worth it, especially Andrew O’Hagan’s Our Fathers, which hasbeen shortlisted for the prize. O’Hagan, a Scottish writer living in London, wasnominated by Norway’s Bergen public library. A memoir about how socialist ideals havedied out in Scotland, Amit liked the novel for its lyricism and "intellectualpower". More power to that.
Pick-A-Book
NOT so rich but not to be scoffed at is the Crossword Book Award of Rs 300,000each for English fiction and Indian language fiction translated into English to beannounced in April. Included in the English fiction shortlist is The Mandala of SherlockHolmes by Jamyang Norbu. The story of its publication is as fascinating as the fictionalaccount of Holmes’ sojourn in Tibet. Unable to find a publisher, Jamyang, anunassuming professor of Tibetan Studies, was planning to publish the book on his own, whena stroke of good luck put him in touch with HarperCollins India editor Renuka Chatterjee.Proving the adage that a good book is its own advertisement, The Mandala steadily climbedup the bestseller list. And made history of sorts, when publishing houses in UK andelsewhere began bidding for a book originally published in India.
Jamyang is up against heavyweight Amitav Ghosh, whose The Glass Palace is a naturalinclusion in the shortlist. Also Pankaj Mishra’s The Romantics, ShashiDeshpande’s Small Remedies and Susan Visvanathan’s Something Barely Remembered.