The wait is nearly over. On Monday, at a literary evening in the city, the winner of the coveted The Hindu Best Fiction Award 2010 will be announced before an august audience. The city is gearing up to receive some of the eminent and upcoming authors in the field of literature. Eleven authors have been shortlisted for the title and the winner walks away with a prize of Rs.5 lakh. Who will it be?
Tabish Khair is Associate Professor in the Department of English, University of Aarhus in Denmark. His book The Thing About Thugs is vying for the title. Mr. Khair's best known works include Babu Fictions (2001), The Bus Stopped (2004), which was shortlisted for the Encore Award (U.K.) and the poetry collection Where Parallel Lines Meet .
Poet, novelist and literary critic Anjum Hasan is shortlisted for Neti, Neti . Her other books are Lunatic in my Head (2007), a book of poems Street on the Hill (2006). Ms. Hasan is the Books Editor, The Caravan .
Kalpana Swaminathan, shortlisted for Venus Crossing , is a surgeon and writer. Apart from books in her own name, she shares the pseudonym Kalpish Ratna with Ishrat Syed.
Palash Krishna Mehrotra is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and writes a regular column for Mail Today . Eunuch Park is his first short story collection and he resides in Dehradun.
Upamanyu Chatterjee, shortlisted for Way to Go , is an author and an IAS officer. His published works include short stories and the novels English, August: An Indian Story (1988), The Last Burden (1993), The Mammaries of the Welfare State (2000) which won the Sahitya Akademi Award for writing in English, and Weight Loss (2006).
Journalist and author Soumya Bhattacharya is shortlisted for If I could Tell You . Her first book was a work of narrative non-fiction called You Must Like Cricket .
Manjul Bajaj, shortlisted for Come, Before Evening Falls , is a part-time consultant on environment and development issues, a mother and homemaker.
Among the authors shortlisted for their debut works are Daisy Hasan for The To-LetHouse , which was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2008. She is from Meghalaya, teaches at the University of Cardiff, Wales and is interested in theatre and video films.
Manu Joseph is Deputy Editor of Open magazine and Serious Men is his debut novel.
Tishani Doshi is a poet, novelist, author, journalist and dancer. She worked with dancer and choreographer Chandralekha until the latter's death in 2006. The Pleasure Seekers is her shortlisted book.
Saraswati Park is Anjali Joseph's first novel. The author studied English at Trinity College, Cambridge and has taught English at the Sorbonne, Paris. More recently Ms. Joseph has been a Commissioning Editor for ELLE (India).
The presenting sponsor of The Hindu Best Fiction Award 2010 is Ford, India. The associate sponsors are: Shriram Chits, VGN, Univercell and Parker. Other sponsors are: Channel partner (NDTV Hindu), Radio partner (Chennai Live), Reading partner (Landmark) and Event Manager (I ads & Events).
