2018 JCB Prize shortlist: Two translated works make the cut

Two translated works -- "Jasmine Days" and "Poonachi" have made it to the inaugural JCB Prize for Literature longlist announced Wednesday.

While "Jasmine Days" (Juggernaut Books) by Benyamin has been translated from Malayalam to English by Shahnaz Habib, "Poonachi" (Westland Publications), originally penned in Tamil by Perumal Murugan, has been translated by N Kalyan Raman.

The two works are among the five books that made the cut from a longlist of 10 books announced last month.

"Through the life of a young protagonist,"Jasmine Days" describes the lives of foreign workers in a Middle East country on the brink of a revolution.

"Beautifully written and translated, this compassionate and morally complex novel confronts some of the difficult questions of our times," the jury said.

Describing "Poonachi" as "funny and warm", it noted that the book forced its readers to look at themselves and their contribution to an "unequal world".

"Perumal Murugan is a master story-teller who reflects profoundly on our transactional society and its inequities and struggles. Through the character of the lonely goat, he has written a powerful modern fable," the jury added.

The jury comprised of film director Deepa Mehta, entrepreneur and scholar Rohan Murthy, astrophysicist and writer Priyamvada Natarajan, novelist Vivek Shanbhag, and author and translator Arshia Sattar.

Other books featured in the list include "Half the Night is Gone" (Juggernaut Books) by Amitabha Bagchi, "All the Lives We Never Lived" (Hachette Book Publishing) by Anuradha Roy, and "Latitudes of Longing" (HarperCollins Publishers India) by Shubhangi Swarup".

"The job of literature is to supply a language for reality, and these books are all exquisite in their description of the worlds often very turbulent worlds