Women writers swept the jury shortlist for fiction category of this year's Crossword Book Award, which was announced here on Thursday, along with shortlists in non-fiction, children's book and translation categories.
The all-women shortlist in the fiction category was dominated by debut novelists -- Madhuri Vijay who made it for "The Far Field", Amrita Mahale for "Milk Teeth", and Shubangi Swarup for "Latitudes of Longing".
The list also includes Meena Arora Nayak's "The Blue Lotus: Myths and Folktales of India" and Vandana Singh's science fiction "Ambiguity Machines, and Other Stories".
The shortlist for the non-fiction category of the 17th edition of the award featured historians like Rajmohan Gandhi, and Ramachandra Guha, as well as former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan.
While Gandhi made it to the list for his "Modern South India: A History from the 17th Century to Our Times", Guha made the cut for "Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World", and Rajan for "The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind".
Other writers on the list include sports journalists Sidhanta Patnaik and Karunya Keshav for "The Fire Burns Blue: A History of Women's Cricket in India", and veteran writer Shanta Gokhale for "One Foot on the Ground: A Life Told Through the Body".
The shortlists were selected by a jury panel consisting of eminent writer and Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF) co-director Namita Gokhale, scholar and translator Arshia Sattar, ex-editor of 'The Hindu' Mukund Padmanabhan, writer Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan and Rohan Murty, founder of the Murty Classical Library of India.
"The Crossword Book Awards not only recognizes and rewards good writing, but also actively promotes Indian authors and their books.
"With each of the nominated writers being stalwarts in their own right, we hope that the coming edition, like its predecessors, will reach out to new audiences in India and abroad thereby expanding the Indian literary landscape," said Chiragh Oberoi, CEO, Crossword Bookstore.
In the children's books category, the nominations included "A Cloud Called Bhura: Climate Champions to the Rescue" (author Bijal Vachharajani and illustrator Aindri C), "All of Me" (author Venita Coelho), "Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire: Adventures in Champakbagh" (author Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar and illustrator Krishna Bala Shenoi), "Machher Jhol: Fish Curry" (author Richa Jha and illustrator Sumanta Dey) and "Year of the Weeds" (author Siddhartha Sarma).
In the translation category, the list features Manoranjan Byapari's "There's Gunpowder in the Air", which has been translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha, and Perumal Murugan's twin novels, "Trial by Silence" and "Lonely Harvest", translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan.
Both the translations also made it to this year's shortlist for the JCB prize for Literature.
The category list also includes "Freedom Fables: Satires and Political Writings" (author Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and translator Kalyani Dutta), "Diary of a Malayali Madman" (author Jayasree Kalathil and translator N Prabhakaran) and "This Could Have Become Ramayan Chamar's Tale: Two Anti-Novels" (author V Ramaswamy and translator Subimal Misra).
The final winners will be announced on January 14, 2020.
Disclaimer: No Business Standard Journalist was involved in creation of this content