DSC Prize 2019 travels to Nepal

True to its South Asian essence, the peripatetic DSC Prize announces its winner at a different South Asian country every year by rotation. The DSC Prize 2016 winner was announced at the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka whereas the DSC Prize 2017 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 for South Asian Literature.

The USD 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.

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.”

Ajit Baral, director of the Nepal Literature Festival, added, “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.”

The jury panel is currently evaluating the entries that have come in for the DSC Prize 2019 and would first arrive at a longlist of 12-15 books in end September. Thereafter, the jury would announce a shortlist of five or six books in early November at the London School of Economics in London. The DSC Prize 2019 would culminate with the announcement of the final winner at a special award ceremony at the Nepal Literature Festival in Pokhara on 16 December 2019.