Prestigious award for Amit Chaudhuri

KOLKATA: Writer, performer and vocalist Amit Chaudhuri has won the prestigious James Tait Black Prize, UK's longest running literary award, for the book 'Finding the Raga: An Improvisation on Indian Music'.

Chaudhuri's winning book in the biography prize is an exploration of the author's relationship with North Indian classical music. The author of several books and works of poetry, Chaudhuri has also released recordings of his singing North Indian classical music. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009 and has been a Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University since 2020.

Biography Judge Dr Simon Cooke of the University of Edinburgh called Chaudhuri's book "a work of great depth, subtlety, and resonance, which unobtrusively changed the way we thought about music, place, and creativity. Folding the ethos of the raga into its own form, it is a beautifully voiced, quietly subversive masterpiece in the art of listening to the world".

London-based Irish novelist Keith Ridgway's book 'A Shock' has won the fiction prize. Over nine overlapping chapters the novel follow different characters living in south London and shines a spotlight on their lives and relationships.

The James Tait Black Prizes are for the best works of fiction and biography during the previous 12 months. The prizes are awarded by the University of Edinburgh's English Literature department.