Easterine Kire’s Spirit Nights in longlist for JCB Prize for Literature

September 4, 2022 27 Views No Comment

Dimapur, September 4 (MExN): Naga author Easterine Kire’s ‘Spirit Nights’ is among the 10 books in the longlist for the Rs 25 lakh JCB Prize for Literature for contemporary fiction by an Indian writer, announced on Saturday.

The 2022 longlist also features six translations alongside four novels including Kire’s, as well as international Booker Prize winner Geetanjali Shree’s ‘Tomb of Sand’.

According to a press release received here on Saturday, the longlist was chosen from a vast range of submissions by writers from 16 states writing in eight languages, including English, published between August 1, 2021 and July 31, 2022.

The panel of five judges who selected the list included authors Amitabha Bagchi and Janice Pariat; author and academician Rakhee Balaram; and translator, historian and academic J Devika.

The release stated that the JCB Prize for Literature is awarded each year to a distinguished work of fiction by an Indian writer. The jury will announce the shortlist of five titles in October while the winner of the JCB Prize for Literature will be announced on November 19.

If the winning work is a translation, the translator will receive an additional Rs 10 lakh. Each of the 5 shortlisted authors will receive Rs 1 lakh; if a shortlisted work is a translation, the translator will receive Rs 50,000, it informed.

Commenting on the longlist for 2022 and the overall reading experience, AS Panneerselvan, Chair of the jury observed that this year’s long list was a rich collection. “The translations from different languages showed how writers were pushing the linguistic and creative boundaries to document our lives. These ten novels are in a sense a metaphor of contemporary India, where each language is permitted to shine; its intrinsic beauty is not subsumed by the other,” the release quoted him as saying.

Talking about the journey of the JCB Prize for Literature and the support it has had from the industry, Mita Kapur, Literary Director, said that the ten books are “bracing, vigorous, transformative, experimental in voice and story. Elemental to storytelling, each book takes soaring flights of imagination even as it is strongly rooted in India.”

The Prize enters its fifth year, marking 50 Longlisted titles that catch the pulse of our literary traditions, she stated, while adding; “This journey, of course, would be incomplete without the publishers who bring these stories to light, the bookstores, online and offline, that give them a platform and the readers who open themselves to the new worlds these books create.”

The jury comment on ‘Spirit Nights’ noted that the book “Spirit Nights posits a different view of the world where the human is just another creature struggling within the vastness of creation.”

Simple yet evocative, full of deep insights and important teachings, this grounded, lyrical novel is a powerful celebration of oral storytelling traditions, it added.

The ten books in the longlist

Rohzin by Rahman Abbas, translated from the Urdu by Sabika Abbas Naqvi (Vintage Books, 2022)
Imaan by Manoranjan Byapari, translated from the Bengali by Arunava Sinha(EKA, 2021)
Escaping the Land by Mamang Dai (Speaking Tiger, 2021)
Paradise of Food by Khalid Jawed, translated from the Urdu by Baran Farooqi (Juggernaut, 2022)
Song of the Soil by Chuden Kabimo, translated from the Nepali by Ajit Baral (Rachna Books, 2021)
Spirit Nights by Easterine Kire (Simon & Schuster, 2022)
Crimson Spring by Navtej Sarna (Aleph Book Company, 2022)
The Odd Book of Baby Names by Anees Salim(Penguin Hamish Hamilton, 2021)
Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell(Penguin Random House India, 2022)
Valli by Sheela Tomy, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil (Harper Perennial, 2022)

Source: https://www.morungexpress.com/easterine-kires-spirit-nights-in-longlist-for-jcb-prize-for-literature