Friday, August 21, 2009

five out of seven: The 2nd Shakti Bhatt Award shortlist

Anuradha Roy: An Atlas of Impossible Longing

Chandrahas Choudhury: Arzee the Dwarf
Mimlu Sen: Baulsphere
Mridula Koshy: If It Is Sweet
Palash Krishna Mehrotra: Eunuch Park
Parismita Singh: Hotel at the End of the World
Preeta Samarasan: Evening is the Whole Day.

One graphic novel and one non-fiction (memoir? I don't know) makes this a year for fiction. I suppose this was inevitable; the selector's job is not to be representational. On the other hand, it depresses me a little: either not enough people are writing in different genres, or if they are those books are not their first ones or just not good enough.

At any rate, if the other books are anything like Chandrahas Choudhury's, Mridula Koshy's or Preeta Samarasan's, I'm happy.

Via a Facebook mail and Nilanjana.

2 comments:

Sharanya said...

Wow, that was quick. I was thinking about submitting Witchcraft but didn't know when the deadline was. A friend who enquired a few weeks ago didn't get a reply.

Maybe more entries, from more genres, would have been eligible if the cut-off date wasn't so quick (or if the deadline had been announced with the submission call, so dilly-dalliers would have gotten around to it sooner)?

Space Bar said...

Sharanya: I'm surprised; there was a call for submissions, including on this blog and on the Shakti Bhatt blog.

You must have missed both of them. Sorry about that.