Bagchi wins DSC Prize for South Asian Literature

Amitabha Bagchi has won the $25,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature with his novel Half the Night is Gone (Juggernaut).

He was announced as the winner during the IME Nepal Literature Festival in Pokhara yesterday (16th December).

Bagchi’s book follows a celebrated novelist, Vishwanath, who is spurred on to write a new work following the death of his son in a car accident.

It was picked from a shortlist featuring 9 Nights in Logar by Jamil Jan Kochai (Bloomsbury Circus), Madhuri Vijay's The Far Field (Grove Press), There’s Gunpowder in the Air by Manoranjan Byapari by Arunava Sinha (Eka), Raj Kamal Jha's The City and the Sea (Hamish Hamilton) and The Empty Room by Sadia Abbas (Zubaan Publishers). 

The £25,000 prize commends the best of South Asian fiction writing and provides recognition for authorship on the region from writers both within and outside the continent.

Administered by the South Asian Literature Prize & Events Trust, the DSC Prize received a record 90 eligible entries this year from 42 publishers and 55 imprints from across the globe.