The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, which is now in its ninth year, has announced that it would be awarding the DSC Prize 2019 winner at the Nepal Literature Festival in Pokhara on December 16. The felicitation ceremony is planned as the finale event of the Nepal Literature Festival which takes place from December 13-16. True to its South Asian essence, the peripatetic DSC Prize announces its winner at a different South Asian country every year by rotation.
The 2016 winner was announced at the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka whereas the 2017 prize was awarded at the Dhaka Lit Fest in Bangladesh, and the DSC Prize 2018 was presented at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet in India. This year, the prize is travelling to Nepal where it will celebrate the shortlisted authors and announce the ninth winner of the DSC Prize.
The US $25,000 international literary prize, which is focused on South Asian fiction writing, is unique in the sense that it is open to authors of any ethnicity or nationality as long as the writing is about South Asia and its people. By showcasing and rewarding the best writing about the region, the prize has been successful in its vision to raise the awareness of South Asian literature and culture around the world, and bring the best South Asian writing to a larger world-wide audience. It encourages writing in regional languages and translations, and whenever a translated entry has won the award, the prize money has been equally shared between the author and the translator.
Speaking about the partnership, Surina Narula, co-founder of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature said, “We are delighted to partner with the Nepal Literature Festival to announce the winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019 in the picturesque city of Pokhara in December. Both the prize and the festival share a common vision to promote and highlight South Asian literature, and there is a rich literary landscape in Nepal which I hope will benefit from this partnership. There is a significant amount of writing emanating from and about the South Asian region that needs to be showcased and presented to a larger global readership. ”
Commenting on the partnership, Ajit Baral, director of the Nepal Literature Festival said, “It is a great honour for us to host the announcement of the winner of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, a prestigious literary award that has done much to bring international recognition to South Asian literature over the years. We are excited about the partnership as it syncs well with our aspiration to turn the Nepal Literature Festival into a neutral South Asian forum for writers, artists, public intellectuals and politicians of the region to come together and discuss a cornucopia of issues, including those which might be off-limits in other parts of the region.”
Past winners of the prize have been H M Naqvi of Pakistan, Shehan Karunatilaka of Sri Lanka, Jeet Thayil and Cyrus Mistry from India, American author of Indian origin Jhumpa Lahiri, Anuradha Roy from India, Anuk Arudpragasam of Sri Lanka, and Jayant Kaikini along with translator Tejaswini Niranjana of India who won the prize last year.
