No Indian author in Man Booker International Prize shortlist

London, Apr 14: No Indian author has made it to the Man Booker International Prize for fiction shortlist this year that has an elusive Italian author, who writes under the pseudonym Elena Ferrante, and the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.

Last year, British-Indian author Sunjeev Sahota's 'The Year of Runaways' had made it to the final list. Judges praised the diversity of the six-candidate list announced today that takes readers around the globe and to the frontier of fiction.

The list includes a Chinese dissident. The settings of the books range from war-torn Angola to Naples terrorised by the Camorra, from Austrian Alps to Istanbul and from metamorphosis in South Korea to allegorical transformation during the Great Famine in China in the 1950s and '60s.

Five of the novelists have been nominated for the first time, with Chinese author Yan Lianke appearing for the second time with 'The Four Books'.

Other are: Pamuk, Ferrante, Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa, Austrian Robert Seethaler and South Korean Han Kang. They have all been shortlisted for the award, which celebrates the finest global fiction translated into English. The winner will receive 50,000 pounds to be split evenly between author and translator.

The winner will be announced on May 16 at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

Ferrante's 'The Story of the Lost Child' and Pamuk's Istanbul-set 'A Strangeness in My Mind' are on the shortlist. Pamuk, one of Turkey's best-known authors, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 2006. Ferrante has topped best-seller lists around the world, but she writes under a pseudonym and rarely gives interviews.

"This exhilarating shortlist will take readers both around the globe and to every frontier of fiction. In first-class translations that showcase that unique and precious art, these six books tell unforgettable stories from China and Angola, Austria and Turkey, Italy and South Korea," said Boyd Tonkin, chair of the Man Booker International Prize judging panel.

"Our selection shows that the finest books in translation extend the boundaries not just of our world - but of the art of fiction itself. We hope that readers everywhere will share our pleasure and excitement in this shortlist."

The list was selected from 155 books by a panel of five judges consisting of: critic and editor Boyd Tonkin; anthropologist and novelist Tahmima Anam; academic David Bellos, Professor of French and Comparative Literature and Director of the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University; editor and academic Daniel Medin, who holds a comparative literature professorship at the American University of Paris (AUP); and prize-winning British poet and author Ruth Padel.

The winner will be announced on May 16 at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

PTI