Bengaluru-based Kannada writer Jayant Kaikini’s No Presents Please - Mumbai Stories , translated by Tejaswini Niranjana, is among the 16 longlisted for this year’s DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
“I feel honoured,” said Mr. Kaikini, a short story writer, poet and lyricist. “The response to translation of my works in English has surprised me. It has been very different from what I have received in the last 40 years for my writing in Kannada.” He said he was happy “in the good company of some of the major writers of South Asian Literature.” Mr. Kaikini’s work joins the list of works of writers Anuradha Roy, Permual Murugan, Neel Mukherjee, and Rita Chowdhury. The announcement was made by this year’s jury chairperson, writer and historian Rudrangshu Mukherjee.
The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, instituted by Surina Narula and Manhad Narula in 2010, is one of the most coveted international literary awards that specifically focuses on South Asian writing. The US $25,000 prize is “open to authors of any ethnicity or nationality as long as the writing is about South Asia and its people.”
In his blurb to Mr. Kaikini’s book, playwright and Jnanpith award winner Girish Karnad says: “Very few writers have caught the absurdities, pathos and comic turmoil that drive in the life in an Indian city today with the vibrancy of Jayant Kaikini.”
