Advance Booking

The Man Booker International Prize announced its list of contenders a couple of days back. It's different from the more well-known Booker Prize: it is awarded every two years, recognising the lifetime contribution of the writer rather than judging him/her based on his latest work. This year's contenders are diverse in their writing, with two Indians in the list. We have Mahasweta Devi, one of my mom's favorite authors with a rich body of work in Bengali, and V.S. Naipaul. Other authors I recognise on the list are Alice Munro (read a couple of her stories in the New Yorker), E. L. Doctorow, Joyce Carol Oates and Arnost Lustig (winner of last year's Kafka prize). The winner will be announced in May, and will join Ismail Kadare and Chinua Achebe, who won the inaugural edition and the 2007 prize respectively. I am rooting for an Indian win(obviously), which would be great after Aravind Adiga's 2008 Booker, and my vote (for what it's worth) goes to Mahasweta Devi. Yes, it is because mom loves her books, but also because I think that though her writing is as nuanced as Rabindranath Tagore or Sarat Chandra Chatterjee, she isn't that famous outside Bengal, and the award would be a fitting recognition for her contribution to Indian literature.

Read more about the prize here.