Inaugural Prize for South Asian Authors Announces Nominees

The long list of nominees for the first annual DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was announced today, reports Outlook India.com . The prize will award $50,000 to "writers of any ethnicity writing about South Asia and its diasporas," says DSC, and must have been written in English or must have been translated into English.

The longlist of fourteen includes Upamanyu Chatterjee for Way to Go, Ru Freeman for A Disobedient Girl: A Novel, HM Naqvi for Home Boy: A Novel and Jaspreet Singh for Chef: A Novel .

The fourteen nominees will be winnowed down to a shortlist of five, which will be announced at the end of October during the South Asian Literature Festival. The festival will take place October 15-25  in London and from October 26 to 31 in the rest of the UK.  The winner of the award will be announced in January 2011 at the Jaipur Literature Festival.  The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature is open to any author in  any part of the world as long as the work is based on the South Asian region and its people.