Adiga's 'Selection Day' shortlisted for DSC Prize for South Asian Literature

Arvind Adiga's 'Selection Day', a riveting tale on cricket and nepotism, is among five fictions shortlisted for the USD 25,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2017.
 
The shortlist was announced in London on Wednesday by a five-member jury headed by well-known feminist-writer Ritu Menon.
 
Besides Adiga's cricketing saga, the other shortlisted works are Anjali Joseph's The Living, Anuk Arudpragasam's The Story of a Brief Marriage, Karan Mahajan's The Association of Small Bombs and Stephen Alter's In the Jungles of the Night.
 
While Joseph's The Living depicts two lives that moves between Norwich and smalltown India, the novel by Arudpragasam, who hails from Colombo, is an account of the political violence that his home country witnessed.
 
Set against a bomb blast in Delhi, Mahajan deals with the trauma of the victims and survivors in his novel while Alter tries to find out the real Jim Corbet.
 
"The shortlist represents a diverse mix of established writers and young novelists fast making their mark in the South Asian literary landscape. The shortlisted authors hail from different backgrounds and geographies and include three Indian writers, of which two are based outside of the South Asian region, one Sri Lankan writer and one American writer based in India," a statement said.
 
Menon said, "all five display a remarkable skill in animating current universal preoccupations in unconventional idioms, and from a distinctively South Asian perspective."
 
The winner of the DSC Prize will be announced at a special Award Ceremony at the Dhaka Literary Festival in Bangladesh on November 18.