Jhumpa Lahiri, Shamsur Faruqi in DSC Prize shortlist

Indian-American author Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Lowland" and Urdu critic Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's "The Mirror of Beauty" have been shortlisted for the prestigious DSC Prize for South Asian literature, a statement said Friday.

Two Pakistani authors' books - Bilal Tanweer's "The Scatter Here is Too Great" and Kamila Shamsie's "A God in Every Stone" - have also made it to the list with Sri Lanka-born British writer Romesh Gunesekera's "Noontide Toll".

The shortlist was announced Thursday evening in London.

"It was a difficult task to zero in on a shortlist from an enjoyable and formidable longlist. There were two first novels as well as novels by established writers and a translation," said Keki Daruwalla, chairman of the DSC Prize jury.

"All the novelists were engaged with rich, historical and experimental tradition of storytelling. We were glad to find that the plots were uniformly organic and the writers did not succumb to formulaic writing," she added.

The winner will be declared at the Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2015.

The $50,000 award has been won by H.M. Naqvi for "Home Boy", Shehan Karunatilaka for "Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew", Jeet Thayil for "Narcopolis", and Cyrus Mistry for "Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer".