DSC Prize 2019: Perumal Murugan, Fatima Bhutto, Mirza Waheed among 15 authors featured in the longlist

Comprising titles such as Amitav Bagchi’s Half the Night is Gone, Perumal Murugan’s A Lonely Harvest and Fatima Bhutto’s The Runaways, the longlist for the 2019 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was announced on 26 September at the Oxford Bookstore in New Delhi. The list for the ninth edition of the $25,000 purse, was declared by the 2019 jury chair Harish Trivedi and consists of works by seven women writers, a few debut novelists as well as three translated works from Malayalam, Tamil and Bengali.

At the end of an enthralling evening, we are delighted to present to you the DSC Prize 2019 longlist which was announced by Jury Chair Harish Trivedi at the Oxford Bookstore today. #DSCPrize2019 @oxfordbookstore pic.twitter.com/OZAqCoLsLO

— The DSC Prize (@thedscprize) September 26, 2019

This year saw a total of 90 entries of which 15 have made it to the longlist, including writers of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Afghan and Sri Lankan origin as well as one American writer with no ethnic connection to the South Asian region. The Indian Express noted Trivedi as saying of the 2019 pool of writers, “Apparently, South Asia is to be found all over the globe and comes in all colours and complexions.” Among the works that are part of the longlist includes Mirza Waheed's Tell Her Everything, a narrative of a strained father-daughter relationship that also depicts a man’s morally exhausted ambitions, Bhutto’s The Runaways that explores modern Muslim identities and Sadia Abbas’ The Empty Room, that tells the story of Tahira, an artist in 1970s Karachi who fills her blank canvases with the vivid, telling colours of the loss and injustice around her. According to a report in The Hindu, Surina Narula, co-founder of the DSC Prize, said “Each of the 15 longlisted books vividly bring out the changing nuances of South Asian life and the effect that globalisation has had in this region.” A shortlist with five to six titles will be announced on 6 November at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE), while the winner of the 2019 prize will be declared on 16 December at the IME Nepal Literature Festival at Pokhara.