JCB Prize for Literature 2020: Deepa Anappara, Dharini Bhaskar among five authors in the shortlist

The JCB Prize for Literature 2020 shortlist was announced online on Friday, 25 September, where Literary Director Mita Kapur revealed the names of the five shortlisted authors. “With submissions including books across genres in English and in translation, the task of finalising the longlist was a hard one. Choosing the shortlist was even harder,” she said. “For all 10 books are brilliant and unique and it took us hours of discussion to pin down the five finalists.” Shortlist for the JCB Prize for Literature 2020: — Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara (Penguin Random House India, 2020) —  **_Chosen Spirits_** by Samit Basu (Simon Schuster India, 2020) —  **_These, Our Bodies, Possessed by Light_** by Dharini Bhaskar (Hachette India, 2019) —  **_Moustache_** by S Hareesh , translated from Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil (HarperCollins, 2020) — Prelude to A Riot: A Novel by Annie Zaidi (Aleph Book Company, 2019)

The  longlist  was announced on 1 September. The jury panel for this year includes author and professor Tejaswini Niranjana, also Chair of the panel; author Aruni Kashyap; director and playwright Ramu Ramanathan; and Deepika Sorabjee, head of Tata Trusts’ arts and culture portfolio. Instated in 2018, the JCB Prize for Literature is awarded each year to distinguished fiction by an Indian writer. Each of the five shortlisted authors will receive Rs 1 lakh; if a shortlisted work is a translation, the translator will receive Rs 50,000. The 2020 winner will be announced on 7 November 2020. The winner receives prize money worth Rs 25 lakh. For a translated work, the translator gets an additional Rs 10 lakh. The winner of the JCB Prize for Literature 2019 was _The Far Field_ by Madhuri Vijay .