Indian-origin Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri’s new book, The Lowland, was on Tuesday “longlisted” for this year’s Booker Prize.
Indian poet-writer Jeet Thayil’s debut novel Narcopolis had made the shortlist of the prestigious £50,000 award last year, but the prize eventually went to Hilary Mantel in a rare Booker double for Bring Up The Bodies.
The shortlist of six books will be announced on September 10. The Booker Prize, which marks its 45th year in 2013, will be handed over on October 15 at London’s Guildhall when the final winner will be revealed.
The six writers on the shortlist will each get £2,500 and designer-bound edition of his/her book. The winner will receive a further £50,000.
London-born Jhumpa Lahiri, 46, who had earlier written The Interpreter of Maladies (1999), The Namesake (2003), and Unaccustomed Earth (2008), has in her new novel focused on West Bengal’s Naxalite movement in the late 1960s onward and its impact on the lives of two brothers. No India-based writer has made the list this year.