Novelist Amitabha Bagchi wins South Asian lit prize

NEW DELHI: Amitabha Bagchi’s novel, Half The Night Is Gone, has won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019. He takes home a cash prize of 25,000 US dollars. The announcement was made at

Nepal Literature Festival

in the panoramic city of

Pokhara

on Monday.

Bagchi is the author of three novels: Above Average, The Householder and This Place. His latest novel is a post-colonial narrative which unfolds over three generations and maps the intertwining of fates and cultures.

The jury citation read, “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… 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,”

Jury chair Harish Trivedi, speaking on behalf of the jury said, “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 six 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.”

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