Mathrubhumi announces new literary award; Shashi Tharoor to be part of three-member jury

Mathrubhumi announced Book of the Year, a new award celebrating Indian literature, on 17 October. It is open to all English-language fiction published in India, with regional works translated into English also being eligible. The recipient of the award will be given Rs 5 lakh and a memento. The first award will be presented at the third edition of the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters (MBIFL), held at Thiruvananthapuram from 30 January to 2 February, 2020.

[caption id=“attachment_7517581” align=“alignnone” width=“825”]  Mathrubhumi announced Book of the Year, a new literary award celebrating Indian literature.[/caption] The award is inviting submissions from publishers immediately, and has a narrow three-month window to make its decision. Of the submissions, a team of experts will hand over their selection to a three-member jury including politician and MBIFL patron Shashi Tharoor, Kannada playwright and president of the Sahitya Akademi Chandrashekhara Kambara, and a third member, yet to be finalised, who will be a “non-Malayali woman writer”, according to a Huffington Post report. The theme of the festival’s third edition is ‘Shrinking Spaces; Transcending Letters’. Publishing and media house Mathrubhumi was founded in 1923 and has been a beacon of Malayalam literature and a leading platform for writers from Kerala.