Women shine through on this year’s shortlist for world’s richest International Dublin Literary Awards, apart from author Anuradha Roy joining the list as well. The announcement of this fantastic list made by Dublin City Council, two days ago, has been met with jubilation all around.
Celebrating 25 years, this International Dublin Literary Award is sponsored by the Dublin City Council. Notably, one of the richest literary awards in the world. Each year it is presented for a single work of fiction, published either in English or translated to English, worth €100,000 to the winner. If the book has been translated, the author receives €75,000 and the translator receives €25,000.
10 novels have been shortlisted for the 2020 International DUBLIN Literary Award. Among them, eight shortlisted writers are women, including Anna Burns, Olga Tokarczuk and Tayari Jones.
The 10 titles on this year’s shortlist are:
- The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
- Milkman by Anna Burns
- All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy
- Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated by Tina Kover
- Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
- An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
- History of Violence by Édouard Louis, translated by Lorin Stein
- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
- There There by Tommy Orange
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
This year’s shortlist spans from India, Ireland, Poland, the US and Canada, to Britain, Iran and France.
Speaking on the selection list for this year’s shortlist, Mayor of city Dublin was quoted by Irishtimes as saying “Looking at this fantastic list of books makes me so excited about our literary award this year. It’s more important than ever that Dublin City Council does its best to support the arts in such challenging times and the International Dublin Literary Award is a huge statement of encouragement for writers.”
“In October, we’ll find out which of these talented authors will receive €100,000 from the city but in the meantime, I urge everyone to read as many of the ten as you can. Borrow them from your local library countrywide,” the Mayor added.
All The Lives We Never Lived has been selected from a list of 156 novels. These novels were submitted by library systems in 119 cities in 40 countries. The award longlist is nominated by libraries worldwide. “There There” by Tommy Orange was nominated by the most libraries.
Commenting on Roy’s work, Judges said:
Set in the 1930s, Anuradha Roy’s new novel is like an Indian raga that continues to resonate long after you have finished the last chapter. Myshkin is the nine-year-old protagonist, and the central event in his life is revealed in the novel’s opening sentence: “I was known as the boy whose mother had run off with an Englishman”. The Englishman turned out to be Walter, a German, who had to leave British India in a hurry, taking Myshkin’s beloved mother, with him, triggering a memorable saga of love, memory, kindness, human frailty and the devastating loneliness of a boy.
About the author Anuradha Roy
[Anuradha Roy] was born in Calcutta, India in 1967, is a critically acclaimed writer. The shortlisted work “All The Lives We Never Lived” happens to be her fourth novel which was the winner of the Tata Literature Live Book of the Year Award in 2018.
The novel was also shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the JCB Prize, and The Hindu Literary Prize in the same year and for the Walter Scott Prize in 2019.
Roy’s exquisite story-telling has won her the Economist Crossword Prize for Fiction for her novel The Folded Earth, which was also nominated for several other prizes, including the Man Asian Literary Prize, the D.S.C. and the Hindu Literary Award.
In addition to it, her first novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008), has been widely translated and was named by World Literature Day as one of the sixty essential books on modern India.
She has yet another feather in her cap to make India proud. She is the only Indian in the list of 13 novelists who have been long-listed for Man Booker Prize in 2015 for her third novel, “Sleeping on Jupiter”.
The announcement of this year’s ‘Dublin literary Award’ winner will be made on October 22nd as part of International Literature Festival Dublin.
The prize was won last year by US author Emily Ruskovich for Idaho and in 2018 by Mike McCormack for Solar Bones.
