This week, our editors report on literary prizes around the world — from an intergenerational family saga to a new approach to the trope of the madwoman in literature, get ready to add some exciting titles to your to-be-read list!
Kathryn Raver, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from France
A few weeks back, I wrote an update for Asymptote about France’s Prix Goncourt shortlist, which at the time had just been announced—and this week, the results are in! On Monday, from among a shortlist of seven other authors, the Academie Goncourt awarded the prize to Algerian writer Kamel Daoud’s Houris. Daoud’s novel follows a young Algerian woman as she navigates her country in the aftermath of the civil war of the 1990s and is Daoud’s second Goncourt success—the first being his novel Meursault, contre-enquête, which won the Prix du premier roman in 2015. I’m on a mission to read all of this year’s shortlist and only just started Houris– but from what I’ve read so far, it certainly deserves the accolades it’s received.
The Prix Femina—another of France’s coveted literary prizes—also named its winner this week. Franco-Venezuelan author Miguel Bonnefoy took home the award for his most recent novel, Le rêve du Jaguar—an intergenerational story that explores the bonds of family amid the turbulent political climate of 20th century Venezuela. The novel was also awarded the Prix du Roman de l’Academie Française last month.
Alia Trabucco Zeràn’s Propre (translated from Spanish to French by Anne Plantagenet) was awarded the Femina’s categorical prize for Foreign Novel. It’s a thriller that tells the tale of domestic work, class, and violence in Chile. An English translation is available as well (translated as Clean by Sophie Hughes).
Though nothing has yet been announced, English translations of both Daoud’s and Bonnefoy’s books are likely well on the way—so keep your eyes peeled!
Zohra Salih, Editor-at-Large, reporting on India
The recently announced and much anticipated shortlist for the prestigious JCB Prize for Literature, now in its seventh year, features three translations from Indian languages.
Sakyajit Bhattacharya’s atmospheric Ekanore, or ‘The One Legged’, is translated from the original Bengali by Rituparna Mukherjee, and blends Bengali lore with a gothic sensibility, resulting in a genre-bending work of speculative fiction. They say that in childhood, spaces seem bigger than they really are, but Bhattacharya’s novel makes one wonder if this distortion ever really goes away. Lingering anxieties and curiosities can take up vast expanses in our adulthood, and the novel is a fascinating examination of the sense that time itself is out of proportion.
‘Sanatan: A Novel’, written by Sharankumar Limbale and translated from the Marathi by Paromita Sengupta, is a sobering look at an evil that perpetuates suffering on an altogether real scale: caste violence. It is the story of abuse suffered by the lower caste, ‘untouchable’ Mahar community at the hands of the upper castes, and, in light of the utter and endless barbarity that Bhimnak Mahar and his kin face, time is again understood differently—as a cycle of pain and repeated oppression that never ends, binding the Mahars to the same fate. Limbale refers to Puranic lore and myths to offer an alternative understanding of Dalit history, confronting an immensely difficult truth in order to imagine a different ending to this story.
Lastly, breaking with all conventional representations of the ‘madwoman’ in literature, Sandhya Mary’s ‘Maria, Just Maria’, written in Malayalam and translated by Jayasree Kalathil, questions the binaries of in/sanity, ab/normalcy and who is allowed to be not mad. The book follows the eponymous Maria, alternating between her perspective as a child and her perspective as an adult. What is distinctive is how we are given access to the interiority of madness, as Maria eloquently and nonchalantly shares how she’s come to find herself in a psychiatric institution and her frequent conversations with Karthava Eesho Mishahi, aka Jesus Christ. Social anthropologist Tanya Luhrrman has written about how the believer’s relationship with God is kindled and ‘made real,’ fundamentally underlining a sense of companionship with godly figures—this is certainly true for Maria, whose world is replete with talking saints and animals, with a socialist slant. It is ultimately a deeply compelling narrative of survival, set in an absurdist register. This is translator Kalathil’s third nomination; she previously translated Moustache by S Hareesh which went on to win the 2020 prize.
This year, the prize is chaired by beloved writer Jerry Pinto, author of Em and the Big Hoom (perhaps THE definitive contemporary Indian novel on the madwoman). The winner will be awarded a cash prize of Rs 25 lakh, and if it is a translated work, the translator will be awarded a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh. The results will be announced on November 23. Mark your calendars!
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