PTI — The winner of the 2019 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature will be announced at the Nepal Literature Festival in Pokhara on December 16.

The presenters of the award said that the felicitation ceremony is planned as the finale event of the four-day festival which will begin on December 13.

The DSC Prize winner is announced at a different South Asian country every year by rotation. The 2016 winner was announced at the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka while in 2017 it was done at the Dhaka Lit Fest in Bangladesh. The DSC Prize 2018 was presented at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet.

The USD 25,000 international literary prize, which focuses on South Asian fiction writing, 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 aims to raise 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.

Speaking about the partnership, Surina Narula, co-founder of the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature said, “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,” she said.

Ajit Baral, director of the Nepal Literature Festival, said it was a great honour that the winner will be announced at the event.

“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,” he said.

“We are excited too to have got this opportunity to introduce a medley of some of the finest writers writing about South Asia, who would be present at the Festival as part of the announcement, to the Nepali audience,” he added.

Administered by the South Asian Literature Prize & Events Trust, the DSC Prize prides itself on a thorough and transparent judging process and is modelled on global best practices.

At the core of the process is a five-member international jury panel comprising literary luminaries drawn from diverse geographies and expertise, which is solely empowered to adjudicate on the entries received.

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 5 or 6 books in early November in London.

The prize was instituted by Surina Narula and Manhad Narula in 2010.

Past winners of the prize are H M Naqvi of Pakistan, Shehan Karunatilaka of Sri Lanka, Jeet Thayil and Cyrus Mistry from India, American author of Indian origin Jhumpa Lahiri, Anuradha Roy from India, Anuk Arudpragasam of Sri Lanka, and Jayant Kaikini along with translator Tejaswini Niranjana of India who won the prize last year. ZMN SHD SHD