Chair of the jury panel, Harish Trivedi via The DSC Prize on Twitter.
KARACHI: Pakistani authors Sadia Abbas and Jamil Jan Kochai have been nominated for this year’s DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, an international literary prize awarded annually to writers with diverse ethnicity and nationality.
The prize is awarded to writers of full-length novel that is written in English or translated into English and covers themes such as culture, history, politics or people. The nominations list was announced on Thursday that features authors of Indian, Pakistani, and Afghan origins, and one of the works from India is a translation from a work in Bengali.
From Pakistan, Abbas is nominated for her novel titled The Empty Room and Kochai is nominated for his novel titled 99 Nights in Logar. According to The Express Tribune the shortlist of six novels announced formally in London by the chair of the jury panel, Harish Trivedi. According to the Daily Times, at the event Harish spoke about the impressive diversity that the nominations of the award embodies as he said, “One of the novels is set in Pakistan of the 1970s, one in Kashmir, and one in Afghanistan. The sixth is actually set in a prison and was written originally in Bengali by an author who has actually served time and used that period to learn to read and write. That too is South Asia.”
The program was founded in 2010 by Surina and Manhad Narula and promises an award of $25,000 to the winner.
