His book, The Lives of Others has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Neel Mukhejee. (Photo: Agencies)
London: Kolkata-born British author Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others, set in the troubled Bengal of the 1960s and centred around a dysfunctional family, has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2014.
Mukherjee, who studied at Oxford and Cambridge, was also the only Indian-origin author to be in longlist earlier this year, the first time the prestigious award opened up for anyone writing in English regardless of nationality.
Mukherjee is now a British citizen and reviews fiction for the Times and the Sunday Telegraph. The Lives of Others is his second novel, published in May. The book is based in Kolkata and centres around a dysfunctional Ghosh family in the 1960s.
His first novel, A Life Apart, was a joint winner of the Vodafone-Crossword Award in India. Others on the shortlist are US authors Joshua Ferris (To Rise Again at a Decent Hour) and Karen Joy Fowler (We Are All Completely Beside Our-selves); Australian Rich-ard Flanagan (The Narrow Road to the Deep North) and British writers Howard Jacobson (J) and Ali Smith (How to be Both.
Previously, the prize was open only to authors from the UK and the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe. The £50,000 prize was opened to writers of any nationality, writing originally in English and published in the UK, for the first time in its 46-year history.
( Source : PTI )
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