After losing out on the Man Booker Prize, Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri has made it to the finals of the 2013 US National Book Award in fiction for her new novel, “The Lowland”.
After losing out on the Man Booker Prize, Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri has made it to the finals of the 2013 US National Book Award in fiction for her new novel, “The Lowland”.
Pulitzer Prize winning Lahiri’s tale of two brothers set in Kolkata of the 1960s figures in the finals with four other works in the fiction category.
These are: “The Flamethrowers” by Rachel Kushner (Scribner); “The Good Lord Bird” by James McBride (Riverhead); “Bleeding Edge” by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin) and “Tenth of December” by George Saunders (Random House).
In a review of her latest novel, the New York Times noted: “Jhumpa Lahiri first made her name with quiet, meticulously observed stories about Indian immigrants trying to adjust to new lives in the United States, stories that had the hushed intimacy of chamber music.”
“The premise of her new novel, ‘The Lowland,’ in contrast, is startlingly operatic,” the influential US daily said calling it “certainly Ms. Lahiri’s most ambitious undertaking yet”, that “eventually opens out into a moving family story”.
Born in London, 46-year-old Lahiri, who lives in New York’s Brooklyn, is the daughter of immigrants from West Bengal.
She is the author of three previous books. Her debut collection of stories, “Interpreter of Maladies”, won the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Her novel “The Namesake” was a New York Times Notable Book and was selected as one of the best books of the year by USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications.
“The Namesake” was also adapted into a film of the same name by acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair.
Her second book of short stories, “Unaccustomed Earth”, was named one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review.
At the Nov 20 NBA awards ceremony in New York, each winner in the Young People’s Literature, Poetry, Nonfiction and Fiction categories will receive $10,000, while the other finalists will receive $1,000.
The judges considered more than 1,400 submissions for this year’s prizes. To be eligible, a book must have been written by a US citizen and published in the US between Dec 1, 2012, and Nov 30, 2013.
IANS
