Kavita Jindal’s entry was picked as the winner. You can read it here.

Set during the Opium Wars, it features a polyglot cast and crew: a motley array of sailors and stowaways, coolies and convicts – people only hinted at in official records. As they sail down the Hooghly River and into the sea, their old family ties are washed away and they forge new lives in remote lands. Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy attempts to fill in the blanks left by the archives.

Might you be descended from merchants, soldiers, seamen, indentured labourers? Does someone in your family have a connection to the East India Company?

Discover and share your own connections to the East India Company with the help of experts fromThe National Archives, London Metropolitan Archives and National Maritime Museum. Hear from historians and genealogists who have successfully traced their own ancestors, from Anglo-Indians to Chinese-Caribbeans and British Yemenis. The day will culminate in an interview with Amitav Ghosh by Razia Iqbal.

Part of the Traders Unpacked season, 25 September 2011–25 February 2012.

The East India Company was given its first royal charter by Elizabeth I. By the time it was abolished 250 years later, Queen Victoria was on the throne. Traders: the East India Company and Asia is a new gallery at the museum which examines the history and relevance of Britain’s trade with Asia, through the East India Company.

Mustafa Abubaker (pictured on the left) with actor and comedian, Aziz Ansari

Q. Please tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into writing?

I’m a freshman at High PointUniversityin North Carolinabut I live in Atlanta, Georgia. I got into writing as early as the fifth grade when my class was assigned to write a piece on 9/11. My teacher called me in during break time to tell me how great it was and even called my parents at work to tell them about it. Ever since then, I have known I had a gift. I kept writing here and there up until my freshman year in highschool when I decided to write the novel The Surrogate which I finished just before junior year.

Q. Please tell us what your book is about?

The Surrogate is a very personal piece of work to me just because I was going through a lot of stuff with this girl while I was writing it. It revolves around a boy named Fahad who is adopted by a writer inChicagonamed Faraz. It is essentially a long letter from Faraz to Fahad which exposes the events which led to Fahad’s adoption as well as the differences between the two.

Q. What inspired you to write your first book?

I was mainly inspired by the thought of just creating something I could put my name on. I realized that I could have an impact on other people. As far as influences, my grandfather convinced me what I was doing was entirely feasible. I was also going through my first heart break at the time which in turn provided me with the content I needed to finish the novel.

Q. Did you have a writing ritual when you were writing your novel, and what kept you going?

Honestly, I wish I had some kind of ritual when I write but I don’t. When I was writing the book, I would just work on it whenever I had the time, often late at night. I definitely lost some sleep over it.

Q. As a new and emerging writer, what’s been your greatest highlight?

My greatest highlight so far has been recieving the 2011 YoungArts Award for Novel Writing. I had submitted the first chapter of my next project Intangibles which focuses on an EmoryUniversitydropout who watches all his friends succeed while he attempts to find his niche.
Q. If you weren’t a writer what would you be doing?

If I wasn’t interested in writing and wasn’t writing at all, I honestly would just be another kid in school. I can’t imagine not writing at this point. It is a part of me and I am confident that it will take me far.
Mustafa Abubaker was born in Queens on July 25th, 1993. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia but goes to school at High Point University in North Carolina. He is a Journalism major. He also runs a music blog which you can find here. He is currently hard at work writing his next novel. You can follow him on Twitter @mustafaintheory

 

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2012 was awarded to Singapore based Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka for his debut Chinaman (Johnathon Cape).

The $50,000 (around £32k) DSC Prize 2012 was awarded to Shehan Karunatilaka at a ceremony attended by eminent literary figures, renowned authors and a diverse literary audience at this year’s Jaipur Literature Festival.

Ira Pande, Jury chairperson said “The winning title is a brilliant narration of all that is both great and sad about South Asia and in that sense it brings a world to the reader that needs to be seen outside this region. No longer are novelists who write of violence, breakdown of communities and the old way of life able to speak the whole truth about our world.”

“The speech rhythms of smaller towns and indigent characters, so seldom seen and heard, are brought alive by a writer who handles character and speech with consummate ease. That world has long needed a suitable metaphor and he has discovered it: Cricket. Set in Sri Lanka, as an epic search for a lost player, Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilake is both a portrait of a lost way of life and a glimpse into the future this vast and vivid region is fated to occupy.”

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was founded in January 2010 to celebrate writing that highlights the South Asian region, its people, culture and diaspora. The DSC Prize, which has been envisioned as a unique and prestigious award, recognizes the literary works of authors across the globe writing on South Asia, transcending the origin or ethnicity of the author. The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2011 was awarded to HM Naqvi for his debut novel Home Boy (HarperCollins India).

With the launch of The Flying Man (Headline)  this January, Roopa Farooki has published five novels in five years – here are her tips on how she starts a novel, and how she manages to finish what she starts!

What inspires you to write?

Like many writers, I am inspired by what is closest to me – in my case, it’s family, and I’m particularly interested in writing multicultural family dramas, intimate stories of relationships which span continents and generations. I find endless inspiration in this area – there are so many stories to tell, and they are universal, as the experience of family is one shared by everyone.

What keeps you writing?

It’s been said that starting a novel is fairly easy, it’s finishing it that’s tough! I find that my stories tend to build their own momentum as I write them, and carry me along with them – I find I can’t wait to write the next page, as I want to know what happens next as much as anyone, and I want to exorcise the chattering characters out of my head and onto the page. When I’m in full flow, I become quite resentful if I have to answer the phone, or eat, or sleep, as time not spent writing feels like a waste. That said, sometimes everyone loses momentum – if I find that writing a particular scene is hard work, then I usually leave it out, as if I’m not excited about writing it, I find it hard to believe that someone would be excited about reading it. It’s a good way of pre-editing those bits of a book that someone might be tempted to skip!

Top Tip for Finishing a Book in 2012

It sounds fairly obvious, but if you’re a writer, you need to write. I write almost every day, my four kids permitting, not because it’s my job and I’ve got a deadline, and not even because it’s what I enjoy doing most. I write because I must. So my tip is to do just that – to write every day, and write something that compels you, because it’s a story you just have to tell! After all, a page a day will result in a novel at the end of the year. I’m aiming to write the first draft of my sixth novel for next year, so we’ll see if I manage to follow my own advice this time around!

A River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh is just one of the titles shortlisted

An unprecedented seven novels have been shortlisted for the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize, Chair Judge Razia Iqbal announced today.

Speaking at a press conference at Man Group offices in London, Ms. Iqbal revealed that because of the strength of contemporary fiction coming out of Asia, the decision had been made to increase the number of writers on the shortlist from the usual five to seven.

The shortlisted titles are as follows:

· JAMIL AHMAD, Pakistan – The Wandering Falcon (Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)

· JAHNAVI BARUA, India – Rebirth (Penguin India/Penguin Books)

· RAHUL BHATTACHARYA, India – The Sly Company of People Who Care (Pan Macmillan/Pan Macmillan India/Picador)

· AMITAV GHOSH, India – River of Smoke (John Murray/Penguin India/Hamish Hamilton)

· KYUNG-SOOK SHIN, South Korea – Please Look After Mom (Alfred A. Knopf)

· YAN LIANKE, China – Dream of Ding Village (Grove Atlantic)

· BANANA YOSHIMOTO, Japan – The Lake (Melville House)

90 books were submitted for entry in 2011 and the longlist of 12 books was announced in October last year. Four of the shortlisted novels were originally written in English; the novels from South Korea, China and Japan are all judged in translation.

Speaking of the decision Chair Judge, Razia Iqbal said, “The judges were greatly impressed by the imaginative power of the stories now being written about rapidly changing life in worlds as diverse as the arid borderlands of Pakistan, the crowded cityscape of modern Seoul, and the opium factories of nineteenth century Canton. This power and diversity made it imperative for us to expand the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist beyond the usual five books.”

The two other judges for this year’s Prize are Pulitzer-prize finalist and author of The Surrendered, Chang-rae Lee, and Vikas Swarup, author of Q&A which was filmed as the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire. The judges’ comments on each book can be found below.

Chair Director of the Man Asian Literary Prize, Prof. David Parker said, “Once again the Man Asian Literary Prize makes a unique offering by bringing the best writing of both South and East Asia into the same frame, allowing us all to glimpse the diverse richness of imagination in play in Asia today.

The winner of the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize will be announced on Thursday March 15th 2012 at a black tie dinner in Hong Kong, the home of the Prize.

The Prize can be followed on Twitter at @MALPrize and #MALPrize11, as well as on Facebook at facebook.com/MALPrize

Q. When did you realise you were a writer?

I have always had the urge to commit pen to paper – I believe I was three or four when I picked a pen or pencil – and before I could write, before I mastered the alphabet, picked up the Queen’s English, I am told that I doodled extensively. I still do.

Q. Homeboy is engaging, it hooks the reader into the story within the first few lines, and keeps a level of anticipation all the way through. Did you have a fire in your belly when you wrote it and how long did it take?

I had a fire in my belly but that fire alone cannot sustain you. Writing, writing a novel, takes Herculean discipline – sitting down day after day after day, come hell, high water, or a death in the family. Home Boy took about three, maybe four years to complete. There are times when you can’t write – my back gave way halfway through the project – times you won’t write, when you have to trick yourself; I developed an elaborate system of rewards, from the promise of a walk around the block water to a cigarette. And I didn’t write War and Peace.

Q. Is this the first novel you’ve ever written?

I remember stapling together an anthology of linked stories in class four and presenting to my teacher.  And I understand that linked stories pass for novels these days.

Q. What inspired you to tell this story, about a young Pakistani in the US who finds himself in a very different world after 9/11?

I don’t quite remember the genesis of Home Boy – I was at a bar in the Bowery one night, scrawling on the back of a cocktail napkin – but I happened to be in the States at an anxious, unsettled time. I would have written a very different novel had I been elsewhere, Strasbourg, Papua New Guinea, Karachi. 

Q. It is often said that a first novel says more about the author. If this is true, what do you think Homeboy says about you?

Most debuts are fundamentally bildungsromans. Home Boy is grounded in the comic tradition of the American coming-of-age story – Huckleberry Finn, Goodbye, Columbus, Catcher in the Rye or The Mysteries of Pittsburg, for that matter. I had to get mine out of the way.

Q. My point being – are you a mummy’s boy? 

I like to think that I have always been my own man (but you will have to check with my mother).

Q. I recently went to Imran Khan’s book luanch here in the UK in which he said, after 9/11 every Muslim became a suspect – what would you say to that?

I am not a political analyst, sociologist or anthropologist. I don’t have any empirical data on the matter. I do understand that things were tough, that things in some way remain tough: one came across an exposé in the Associated Press recently, for example, about extensive spying on the Muslim-American community.

Q. What was it like winning the DSC South Asian Literature Prize? 

It was fabulous. There were several thousand people in the audience. There were cameras, flashes. But you know, I write because I have to, because I have an itch. Whether I won or lost, I would have to get back to my desk, and write again.

Q. What have you been working on since, is there another book out soon?

I am working on a big, bad comic epic that contends with light and darkness, the universe and its vastness. It’s an exciting project, one that keeps me up till six in the morning. And since you ask, I will be done sooner, rather than later.

Q. What advice would you give to an aspiring author?

Become a doctor. The world needs doctors.

Q. Finally what do the initial HM stand for? 

I cannot disclose that – I don’t know you that well – but I can tell you that V.S. stands for Vidiadhar Surajprasad.

H.M. Naqvi is the award-winning author of Home Boy. He has worked in the financial services industry, run a slam venue, and taught creative writing at Boston University. He has received the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the Phelam Prize for poetry, and has participated in the Brooklyn Book Festival, the Jaipur Literature Festival, Art Dubai, Lollapalooza, and the IWP residency at the University of Iowa. Ensconced in Karachi, H.M. Naqvi is working on his second novel. He smokes Davidoffs.

(drum roll)

Well done to GD Stickland (who you may remember also won the poetry category in our 2008 competition).

Roads, North and South

A pantoum

My friend, when you were only four
and dreaming of owning a bike,
and riding so fast on the shore
I smiled. For we were so alike.

From dreaming of owning a bike,
on the shore road now, you and I ride
and I smile for we are so alike
in jet black leather side by side.

When now, here along the shore; we ride
together, I wish we could be
in jet black leather, side by side,
always. My love, don’t you see?

That’s how I wish our future could be.
On roads, from cold north to warm south
Always! My love, don’t you see?
No loving words come from your mouth

On a rough road in the warm south
My dreams for you ended one day.
I wished for any word from your mouth
And thought you called my name. ‘Please stay.’

My dreams for us ended that day.
I awoke and knew you had gone.
Heard you call my name. ‘Oh please, stay.’
I replied. Only words on my tongue.

I awoke and knew it was done.
No future for us, only a past.
You on the road, words on my tongue.
You loved to dream of riding fast.

With no future for us, only a past
I remember at the church door.
You loved to dream of riding fast,
my friend, when you were only four.

and a highly commended entry by Fatima Al Matar.

Absence

The wind often carries your voice
enveloped in a dream

sometimes the shadow of your arm reaches out with
mine in a trivial gesture; when turning off the lamp
or closing and laying down a book

I wish to unwrap from your caging murmur
to feel the gentle falling of night

only you can touch darkness
put the twitching flicker of candles to rest

next to me you lie
always in your absence.

Well done to all the entrants. Please leave your comments for our winners!

Siddhartha Mukherjee was named the winner of the 2011 Guardian First Book Award at a ceremony in London. (December 1, 2011)

His book, The Emperor of All Maladies – published by Fourth Estate – was the only non-fiction title on the shortlist, and has been described by its author as a biography of cancer, “an attempt to enter the mind of this immortal illness, to understand its personality, to demystify its behaviour”. The book also enters the minds of cancer patients, interweaving personal stories of struggles to survive with the science and politics of cancer research.

The Guardian First Book Award recognises the finest new authors who have had their first book published in English in the last year. As winner, Siddhartha receives a £10,000 prize plus an advertising package in the Guardian and the Observer.

Siddhartha Mukherjee, an American oncologist and award-winning science writer, said: “It is a great and distinct honor to be selected for this award. In recognising The Emperor of All Maladies, the judges have also recognised the extraordinary courage and resilience of the men and women who struggle with illness, and the men and women who struggle to treat illnesses. I am delighted and honoured to join a formidable list of writers and scholars – Zadie Smith, Alexandra Harris, Petina Gappah, Alex Ross among them. Thank you.”

Author and academic Sarah Churchwell, who was on the judging panel, said: “The Emperor of All Maladies is a cultural history of cancer and its treatment, from its first identification as a disease in the ancient world to 21st century research into its cellular genesis and treatment.

“Siddhartha Mukherjee has marshalled an immense amount of material into a readable and inspiring story. The result is a gripping, enlightening read about the nature of illness and our battle against what begins to look like mortality itself.”

Siddhartha Mukherjee
Siddhartha Mukherjee is a cancer physician and researcher. His book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in general non-fiction. Mukherjee is an assistant professor of medicine at Columbia University and a staff cancer physician at Columbia University Medical Center. A Rhodes scholar, he graduated from Stanford University, University of Oxford, Harvard Medical School. He has published articles in Nature, The New England Journal of Medicine, The New York Times, and The New Republic. He lives in New York with his wife and daughters.

Mohammed Hanif is just one of the novelists taking part in the festival

January 20-24, 2012 at Diggi Palace, Jaipur 

Festival Co-Director William Dalrymple said “This is our best Jaipur line up ever. I am particularly proud this year to have brought Tom Stoppard and David Hare, two of our greatest living playwrights, cutting edge writers of non-fiction like the Tiger Mother Amy Chua, Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker, great novelists such as Annie Proulx, Ben Okri, Jonathan Safran Foer and Michael Ondaatje, as well as the editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick as well as frontline reports from the Arab Spring and the art of writing for stage and screen. We will also be analyzing the fascinatingly interwoven relationships of Tolstoy, Tagore and Gandhi.”

For full information and to register for free entry please visit http://jaipurliteraturefestival.org