A British author of Indian descent is one of the six novelists short-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize, 2015. The Year of the Runaways is Sunjeev Sahota’s second novel, and centres around the lives of three Indian men — one a Dalit — and a woman, all migrants from India.
The three men are thrown together in a house for migrants in Sheffield, while the woman, a ‘visa-wife’ lives nearby. The novel shines a penetrating light on immigration through the lives of the characters before and after they came to Britain.
Glowing reviews
The 34-year old Mr. Sahota, whose name figured in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelistsin 2013 , has received glowing reviews for the book. His first book Ours are the Streets is about the journey of a young British Pakistani from ordinary teenager to terrorist, and was written after the July 7, 2005 bombings on the London underground.
This is the second year that the prize has been open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the United Kingdom. Till 2014, the Booker Prize was open to authors only from the U.K. and Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe.
This year’s shortlist has two each from the U.K. and the United States, and one each from Jamaica and Nigeria.
Others short-listed
The others whose books have been short-listed are British writer Tom McCarthy for his book Satin Island , Anne Tyler (U.S.) for A Spool of Blue Thread , Hanya Yanagihara (U.S.) for A Little Life , Marlon James (Jamaica) for A Brief History of Seven Killings , and Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria) for The Fishermen . The winner of the £ 50,000 prize will be announced on October 13.
