Bengaluru: Jayant Kaikini has been named as the winner of the DSC Prize South Asian Literature for his work, “No Presents Please”. The prize also carries a purse of a cool $25,000. An announcement of the same was made at the Tata Steel Kolkata Literary Meet held at the Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata.
As “No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories” is a translated work, Jayant and translator Tejaswini Niranjana received the award from renowned author Ruskin Bond, and will be splitting the cash equally.
By winning this award, Jayant, a Kannada poet and short story writer, has beaten world-renowned writers like Kamila Shamsie and Mohsin Hamid. This is the first time that a translated work has won this award.
At the event, the judges praised Jayant saying that through his work, Mumbai came across as a city of ordinary people in the bustling metropolis.
Accepting the award, Jayant said that it is heartening that the translation and short stories are acknowledged as a genre as usually, acclaim is “reserved for the big book, the big novel”. He also expressed his happiness that the jury recognised Tejaswini “equally”.
Winner of the 2017 Atta Galatta-BLF Prize, “No Presents Please: Mumbai Stories” is a collection of short stories set in 1980s Mumbai.
