Akkitham and Benyamin win literary accolades

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Mahakavi

Akkitham

has bagged this year’s ONV literary award instituted by ONV cultural academy, while writer

Benyamin

was chosen for

Muttathu Varkey award

for his masterpiece novel ‘Aadujeevitham’.

The

ONV award

comprising Rs 3 lakh, plaque and certificate will be given to Akkitham at a function in Thiruvananthpuram on May 27, the birth anniversary of ONV.

A jury comprising C Radhakrishan as chairman and S V Venugopan Nair and Prabha Varma as members chose Akkitham for the award. He was selected for the overall contribution to Malayalam literature.

Young poet Anagha Koloth was selected for the ONV young litterateur award instituted by the academy. Anagha will get Rs 50,000 in cash, a plaque and a certificate for her work ‘Mezhukuthirikku Swantham Theeppetti’.

Awards were announced by ONV cultural academy chairman Adoor Gopalakrishnan here on Saturday. Sughathakumari and M T Vasudevan Nair had won the first two ONV literary award.

The Muttathu Varkey award comprises Rs 50,000 and a memento sculptured by PRC Nair. It is instituted by Muttathu

Varkey Foundation

. It will be presented to Benyamin by foundation’s general convener Sreekumaran Thampi at a public ceremony scheduled to be held at Pandalam on May 28.

Mathew J Muttathu, secretary of the foundation, said that Benyamin’s name was selected through a three-phased process. “Novels and complete editions published from 1993 to 2018 have been considered for the award. There was a survey conducted and the views of judging committee comprising authors such as N Sasidharan, M V Narayanan and K R Meera were also taken into consideration before the foundation decided the winner,” said Muttathu.

This is the 28th edition of the literary award instituted to commemorate novelist Muttathu Varkey who passed away in 1989. Benyamin’s novel ‘Aadujeevitham’ published in 2008 had received Kerala

Sahitya Akademi Award

in 2009, Man Asian Literary Prize in 2012 and

Padmaprabha Literary Award

in 2015. The book tells the story of Najeeb Muhammad, who spent three-and-half years in a remote farmland in a Gulf country.