Novelists from Pakistan among top five contenders for South Asia’s biggest literary award

NEW DELHI-

Two Pakistani writers have been shortlisted for next year’s DSC Prize, one of South Asia’s biggest literary awards, according to the shortlist announced in London on Thursday.

Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie and  first-time novelist Bilal Tanweer are among the five writers on the 2015 shortlist who are a step closer to winning the $50,000 awarded to the author of the best novel about South Asia published or translated into English.

Jhumpa Lahiri, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000,  is also on the DSC shortlist with her entry “The Lowland”, a tale of Indian brothers bound by tragedy. The novel was also shortlisted for the Man Booker prize last year.

Also in the running are  London-based Romesh Gunesekera, who was a finalist for the Booker prize two decades ago and India’s Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, who is nominated for his novel which he translated from Urdu.

Bestselling Afghan-born author Khaled Hosseini, whose latest novel “And the Mountains Echoed” had been long-listed along with nine others, did not make the cut.

Keki Daruwalla, the chair of judges, described the selections as “moving, challenging, and thought-provoking.”

“There were moments of great beauty in the multiple narratives and the jury was impressed by the deep structure of each book and the way characters were developed,” Daruwalla said in a statement.

The jury selected the finalists from 75 novels submitted for the award, now in its fifth year. The winner will be announced at the annual literature festival in the Indian city of Jaipur in January.

The finalists are:

* Bilal Tanweer for “The Scatter Here is Too Great” (Vintage Books/Random House)

* Jhumpa Lahiri for “The Lowland” (Vintage Books/Random House)

* Kamila Shamsie for “A God in Every Stone” (Bloomsbury)

* Romesh Gunesekera for “Noontide Toll” (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin)

* Shamsur Rahman Faruqi for “The Mirror of Beauty” (Penguin Books)