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The six shortlisted books competing to win 2012’s $50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature have been unveiled.
They are: U R Ananthamurthy’s Bharathipura, translated by Susheela Punitha (OUP, India); Chandrakanta’s A Street in Srinagar yranslated by Manisha Chaudhry (Zubaan Books, India); Usha K R’s Monkey-man (Penguin/Penguin India); Shehan Karunatilaka’s Chinaman (Random House, India); and Tabish Khair’s The Thing About Thugs (Fourth Estate/HarperCollins-India). The list is completed by Kavery Nambisan’s The Story that Must Not Be Told (Viking/Penguin India).
The prize, established to recognise great work from the South Asian region, is in its second year and the books were whittled down from 16 to six. Chairman of the judges, Ira Pande, said: "All of us were united in feeling that a novel by any definition must have a strong tale to tell. While there will always be legitimate differences between jury members on individual choices, I think we were fortunate this year in arriving at a broad consensus on what we were looking for.
"I have a twinge of regret, as doubtless other jury members do too, that we could not include some of the terrific novels we had before us but that has been a cross that every jury has had to carry."
In January 2011, the inaugural DSC prize was won by Pakistani author H M Naqvi for his debut novel Home Boy (HarperCollins India) and following the announcement, the title was acquired by Hamish Hamilton [Penguin Books] in the UK.
The winner will be announced at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival on 21st January 2012.