Crossword presents 12th edition of book awards

Crossword, the leading bookstore chain, presented the 12th edition of its popular books award here this weekend, with Ravi Subramaniam, called by the Wall Street Journal as John Grisham of banking, bagging a hatrick under the pupular category.

The 12th edition - Crossword Book Award 2013 - saw an impressive response from the various distinguished writers, publishers, critics and book-lovers, who enjoyed a grand evening celebrating Indian literature.

"The 552 entries is the even received in the history of the award. The entire judging process took more than six rigorous months, which included shortlisting of the books to announcing the final winner," Crossword founder R. Sriram said.

This year, the awards decided to follow the financial year mode and considered entries published in India from Jan 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013 --that is 15 months. For the next year, entries from April 2013 to March 2014 will be considered.

Itself the winner of Reid and Taylor Award for best retailer, the chain -- with 84 stores across India -- said the awards were presented by Arrow in association with Principal Retirement Advisors and conducted at the Times Literary Carnival.

The country's finest writers and their books were honoured at a function in Mehboob studios here. It was hosted by Suchitra Pillai and the evening included a memorable performance by percussionist Taufiq Qureshi.

The winners:

"Em and The Big Hoom" by Jerry Pinto (Aleph) and "Boats on Land" by Janice Pariat (Random House) jointly for Indian fiction.

"Righteous Republic" by Ananya Vajpeyi (Harvard Business Press) and "From the Ruins of Empire" by Pankaj Mishra (Penguin) jointly for Indian non-fiction.

"Wisha Wozzariter" by Payal Kapadia (Penguin) and "Book Uncle and Me" by Uma Krishnaswami (Scholastic) jointly for Children's writing.

"A Life in Words" by Ismat Chughtai, translated by Dr. M. Asaduddin (Penguin) for Indian language translation.

"The Bankster" by Ravi Subramanian (Rupa Publications) for popular category.

Also at the event were some ot the other shortlisted authors - Rahul Pandita, Rashmi Bansal, Arunava Sinha, Anand Neelkantan, Anuja Chauhan, Himanjali Sankar, Ranjit Lal, Anchita Ghatak and Rabisankar Bal.

The jury comprised some known names in the literary circles, including Dilip Kumar, Antara Datta, Rita Kothari and Deepak Dalal.