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The longlist for the 2023 JCB Prize for Literature Includes Four Translations and Three First Works. A Guide for Readers

2023 JCB Prize for Literature Longlist Revealed: Manoranjan Byapari and Perumal Murugan Return for the Third Time.
on Sep 04, 2023

Manoranjan Byapari and Perumal Murugan, whose works had previously been longlisted for the Prize, appear for the third time on this year's longlist.

On Saturday, the longlist of ten books for the 2023 JCB Prize for Literature was announced. In its sixth year, the winning author and translator (where appropriate) will each receive Rs 25 lakh and Rs 10 lakh. On October 20, the shortlist will be revealed.

This year, there are four translations from Bengali, Hindi, and Tamil, as well as six books written in English originally. Authors Manoranjan Byapari and Perumal Murugan, whose works have previously been shortlisted for the Prize, appear for the third time. Tanuj Solanki, author, is on the longlist for the second time. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, who has previously been nominated for the Prize as an author, has been nominated as a translator for Hindi writer Manoj Rupda's work. This is Hansda's very first translation. Geet Chaturvedi's debut work in translation makes the list, and the translator, Anita Gopalan, is also included for the first time. Tejaswini Apte-Rahm and Bikram Sharma, both debut authors, are also on the longlist.

Here is the whole list:

The Secret of More, Tejaswini Apte-Rahm (Aleph Book Company)
The Nemesis, Manoranjan Byapari, translated from the Bengali by V Ramaswamy (Westland Books)
The East Indian, Brinda Charry (HarperCollins India)
Simsim, Geet Chaturvedi, translated from the Hindi by Anita Gopalan (Penguin Random House India)
Fire Bird, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by Janani Kannan (Penguin Random House India)
Everything the Light Touches, Janice Pariat (HarperCollins India)
Mansur, Vikramjit Ram (Pan Macmillan India)
I Named my Sister Silence, Manoj Rupda, translated from the Hindi by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (Westland Book)
The Colony of Shadows, Bikram Sharma (Hachette India)
Manjhi’s Mayhem, Tanuj Solanki (Penguin Random House India)

Srinath Perur (Chair), author and translator; Mahesh Dattani, dramatist and stage director; Somak Ghoshal, author, critic, and learning designer; Kavery Nambisan, author and surgeon; and Swati Thiyagarajan, journalist and filmmaker, make up the jury. Srinath Perur stated on the 2023 longlist, "...Given the quality of the entries, it felt like we could easily have come up with a solid second longlist." [...]They give a good representation of the breadth and quality of Indian books released in English in the recent year."

The Secret of More, Tejaswini Apte-Rahm

Tatya, a young man, arrives in the pulsing heart of Bombay, a city that spins cotton into gold, to make a life. Ambitious and hardworking, he establishes himself in the city's famed textile market. Meanwhile, his new spouse, Radha, navigates the joys and tribulations of raising a family in a city that is an odd and frequently befuddling blend of the traditional and the increasingly modernising.

Tatya, who has achieved success in the textile industry, comes across an opportunity in the rising industry of motion pictures and gets swept up in it, despite his reservations about this odd realm of make-believe. His success appears unstoppable - the silent films he makes draw large crowds, and his new theatre is a marvel - but his friendship and attraction to an actress, Kamal, threatens to destabilise his world and forces him to doubt his own integrity.

The Secret of More is a voyage of persistent ambition, steadfast love, and dark betrayal set against the backdrop of bustling colonial Bombay, as Tatya attempts to uncover the secret of more - of having more and becoming more. In a story that takes you from the clamour of textile mills to the splendour of the silent film business, from the congested chawls of Girgaon to the grandeur of sea-facing mansions, one man and his family discover that in Bombay, you can fly - but it's a long way down.

Manoranjan Byapari's Nemesis, translated from Bengali by V Ramaswamy

The second novel in The Runaway Boy trilogy takes us to the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the rumblings of liberation in East Pakistan grew louder and refugees poured into India, seeking sanctuary in West Bengal camps. The Naxalite movement was gaining traction as well; the Communist Party had divided into CPI(M) and CPI(ML), resulting in a bitter power struggle between them and the ruling Congress Party led by Indira Gandhi. We meet a twenty-something Jibon in Calcutta, driven to wrath by starvation, unfairness, and a naive, contagious nationalistic ardour. This blazing torch of a novel paints a fascinating portrayal of a young man navigating the streets of Calcutta in search of a life that is repeatedly denied to him.

The East Indian, Brinda Charry

Meet Tony, a kind and insatiably curious character that brings a fresh viewpoint to every event he meets. After being kidnapped and carried from the coast of India to the bustling streets of London, young Tony finds himself indentured on a Virginia tobacco farm. Tony, who is lonely and terrified, longs for home and dreams of a life beyond service full of adventure and learning. His ambition is to work as a physician's assistant, a root and herb expert, and a dispenser of restorative substances.

Tony's life, like Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which he saw at the Globe during his brief visit to London, is full of oddities and antics, humour and tragedy. Brinda Charry's The East Indian, set mostly during the early days of English colonisation in Virginia, gives voice to an otherwise obscure historical individual and vividly depicts his culture.

Simsim, Geet Chaturvedi, translated from the Hindi by Anita Gopalan

Basar Mal remembers his love and motherland, which he lost during the Partition of Sindh, Pakistan. A young graduate has a fictitious relationship with a girl in a yellow window. Basar Mal and his library are being pursued by the Mumbai land mafia. The struggle of books is shown on a chatty book cover. A motherless Mangan washes and feeds a plastic doll she believes is her kid. Simsim is a struggle between memory, imagination, and reality - an artistically created book that weaves a tale of pursuing happiness, satisfying desire, and coping with loss through the voices of amazing yet sympathetic characters.

Fire Bird, Perumal Murugan, translated from the Tamil by Janani Kannan

Muthu's world is flipped upside down when his father divides the family land, leaving him with nothing and causing irreparable harm to his family's relationships. Muthu is forced to leave his once-perfect environment and seek a new life for himself, his wife, and his children due to the unethical deeds of his once-revered elder brother.

Perumal Murugan draws on his own life experiences of migration and movement to investigate the fragility of our inherent desire for permanency and our ultimately unsuccessful efforts to achieve it in this novel.

Everything the Light Touches, Janice Pariat

We meet several travellers in Everything the Light Touches: Shai is a young Indian woman who travels to India's northeast and rediscovers ways of life that realign and revitalise her through meetings with local cultures. Evelyn is a Cambridge Edwardian student who, attracted by Goethe's botanical teachings, sets out on a trip to find the sacred forests of the Lower Himalayas. Linnaeus, botanist and taxonomist, famously remarked "God creates; Linnaeus organises" when leading an expedition to Lapland in 1732. And Goethe, when travelling across Italy in the 1780s, developed his thoughts for a revelatory poem that called for a reconsideration of our proclivity to reduce plants - and the world - into unchanging pieces.

The story plunges into a whirlwind of ever-expanding themes and contrasts between modern India and its colonial past, urban life and the countryside, capitalism and centuries-old traditions of kindness and thankfulness, drawing liberally from scientific theories. At the heart of the book is a conflict between two ways of seeing: those that fix and label and those that liberate and unite.

Mansur, Vikramjit Ram

The 27th of February, 1627. Mansur, a renowned artist working under the patronage of Mughal emperor Jahangir, is finishing a painting of a dodo and preparing for a trip to Kashmir when he is stopped by a younger colleague, Bichitr. An harmless comment made by this guest, first to Mansur and then to the portraitist Abu'l Hasan, has disastrous effects, drawing additional people at the imperial atelier, the library, and the Women's Quarter into a web of secrets, half-truths, and petty rivalries.

The plot revolves around a jewel-like poem book, the pages of which Mansur has lighted and filled with live butterflies. When the painter arrives in Verinag, Kashmir's royal summer retreat, he must submit the book to its author, the empress Nur Jahan, who had commissioned it as a keepsake for her husband, the emperor Jahangir.

A delay in the book's arrival from the bindery adds to Mansur's fears that its very existence is no longer hidden, as well as his fear that such a valuable item may fall into the wrong hands. What obstacles must the painter overcome before his masterpiece is securely delivered to Verinag?

A little youngster follows an elephant into a forest, enthralled and trance-like. His adventure ends in disaster when the elephant is devoured by wild wolves while the boy is sitting atop it. Years later, aboard a massive ship, he wonders if it is his destiny to see the demise of enormous things. Like the Bastar region, the elephant, and his soon-to-be-decommissioned ship.

He remembers his half-sister's quiet as well. Madavi Irma, the silent girl who raised him and educated him by selling what she collected from the wild. Until she left home one day to join the Maoist Dada Log. Bastar is on fire when he returns home.

To safeguard their land and life, the Adivasis staged an armed insurrection. In retribution, entire villages have been destroyed and their populations crammed into filthy camps. Determined to find his sister, he returns to the forest as a young man and is immediately confronted with the complex deceptions of those who dominate and profit from territory they do not own or comprehend.

The Colony of Shadows, Bikram Sharma

Varun, nine, is struggling to adjust to his new life in Bangalore with his perceptive aunt and ill grandma after the tragic death of his parents. He discovers a fascinating colony that sits abandoned and in ruins when he climbs through a breach in the wall of their back yard. It's eerily familiar, and the more he looks around, the more it reminds him of his old house in Delhi. But familiarity can be deceiving, since something terrible waits in the shadows, waiting for the right moment to strike - and wreak havoc. Will Varun be able to withstand this threat? Will he vanish from the world, devoured alive by the shadow colony?

Manjhi’s Mayhem, Tanuj Solanki

Sewaram Manjhi is a security guard who works outside a swanky Bombay café. On the surface, he's similar to the millions of invisible Indians who keep the city running, but there's a difference: he's filled with rage and will go to any length to get a piece of the good life. Santosh, a hostess at the restaurant across the street, walks in. Santosh, a damsel in distress, has an unusual request for Manjhi, and far be it from him to refuse. What follows is tabaahi - mayhem - as Manjhi becomes entangled in a web of lies and deception while on the hunt for a bag full of money, which leads to broken noses, bloodied heads, sex, seduction, and murder. If he is successful, Manjhi may finally understand what it means to be in control of one's destiny in a land where birth decides fate.