JCB Prize for Literature 2019 longlist announced; Perumal Murugan, Roshan Ali among selected novelists

The longlist for this year’s JCB Prize for Literature has been announced. The selected 10 novels have been written by an eclectic mix of four women and six men comprising both debutants and experienced novelists. Of these 10 novels, two are translations from Tamil and Bengali. [caption id=“attachment_7282491” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Image via JCB Prize for Literature.[/caption] Here is the longlist of this year’s JCB Prize for Literature: 1. Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction - Roshan Ali (Penguin Random House India, 2019) 2. There’s Gunpowder in the Air - Manoranjan Byapari, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha (Westland Publications, 2018) 3. The City and the Sea - Rajkamal Jha (Penguin Random House India, 2019) 4. Milk Teeth - Amrita Mahale (Westland Publications, 2018) 5. The Queen of Jasmine Country - Sharanya Manivannan (HarperCollins India, 2018) 6. Trial by Silence and Lonely Harvest - Perumal Murugan, translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan (Penguin Random House India, 2018) 7. A Patchwork Family - Mukta Sathe (Speaking Tiger Publishing Private Limited, 2018) 8. My Father’s Garden - Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (Speaking Tiger Publishing Private Limited, 2018) 9. The Far Field - Madhuri Vijay (HarperCollins India, 2019) 10. A Secret History of Compassion - Paul Zacharia (Westland Publications, 2019) The longlist was chosen from a range of entries from 14 states and six languages (Bengali, English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu) published between 1 August 2018 and 31 July 2019. The prominent theme running through the longlisted works was the turbulence of the contemporary world. This is the first time that the jury has put two novels by the same author (Trial by Silence and Lonely Harvest are twin sequels to Perumal’s 2015 novel One Part Woman) on the list. The novels by Roshan Ali, Amrita Mahale, Mukta Sathe and Madhuri Vijay are all debut entries The jury panel for this year includes filmmaker and environmentalist Pradip Krishen who also chairs the panel, author and critic Anjum Hasan, authors KR Meera and Parvati Sharma, and economist and former Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India Arvind Subramanian. “We on the jury had a wonderful time discussing these books together. The longlist we have chosen is varied, but all these books do what great fiction should: they take risks, they make arguments - and they touch a magic chord, one that keeps thrumming in your head and heart long after you’ve put the book away. It’s impossible to generalise about these ten books. Indian fiction today is a richly bewildering category, and this longlist is correspondingly varied and complex. These are novels about working-class struggles and upper-class unease, historical evocations and contemporary conflicts, each written in an absolutely distinctive voice,” said Pradip Kishen commenting on the JCB Prize longlist. The JCB Prize for Literature is awarded each year to a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer. The winner receives Rs 25 lakh. The 2019 winner will be announced on 2 November 2019.