Two Pakistani Authors Get Shortlisted for DSC Prize in South Asian Literature

Making Pakistan proud and telling our stories.

Pakistani authors

Pakistani authors Sadia Abbas and Jamil Jan Kochai are making us proud with their works. These authors of Pakistani-origin have been shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2019.

Sadia Abbas and Jamil Jan Kochai are two of six authors shortlisted for the DSC Prize. They are the only two authors of Pakistani origin in the nominees.

It was Britain’s London School of Economics and Political Science who broke the news.


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Sadia’s novel The Empty Room is set in Karachi in the 1970s amid the rise of political and social unrest in the city.

While Jamil’s 99 Nights in Logar tells the story of an Afghan-American boy and his journey in Afghanistan, a country his parents call home. The writer is Pakistani-American himself details the young boy’s journey to self-discovery.

The four other nominees include:

  • Amitabha Bagchi’s Half The Night Is Gone,
  • Madhuri Vijay’s The Far Field,
  • Raj Kamal Jha’s The City and the Sea
  • There’s Gunpowder in the Air by Manoranjan Byapari.

The DSC Prize

The founders of the DSC Prize founders, along with jury chair Harish Trivedi and jury member Jeremy Tambling were present at the event when the nominees were announced.

 


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Surina Narula and Manhad Narula founded the DSC Prize to bring South Asian stories to a global audience and celebrate these stories from South Asia.

The DSC Prize is awarded to writers of any ethnicity or nationality writing about South Asia, or South Asian themes such as culture, politics, history, or people. It is awarded annually for an original full-length novel written in English, or translated into English.

It’s great to see Pakistani authors bring our stories to that platform. Be it stories about the unrest in Karachi, or issues of cultural identity in today’s Pakistan, we want more of this.