Man Booker Prize 2013 Announced at Jaipur Literature Festival

Report by Santanu Ganguly, Jaipur: The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International Prize 2013 were announced on the first day of the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival 2013. Ten finalists have been chosen by a team of five judges for the £60,000 award. The ten finalists are U.R. Ananthamurthy (India), Aharon Appelfeld (Israel), Lydia Davis (USA), Intizar Husain (Pakistan), Yan Lianke (China), Marie NDiaye (France), Josip Novakovich (Canada), Marilynne Robinson (USA), Vladimir Sorokin (Russia) and Peter Stamm (Switzerland).

The judging panel consists of scholar and literary critic, Sir Christopher Ricks, author and essayist, Elif Batuman, writer and broadcaster, Aminatta Forna, novelist Yiyun Li, and author and academic, Tim Parks. The winner of the prize will be announced in London on 22nd May 2013. The Man Booker International Prize is awarded every two years to a living author who has published a substantial body of work either written or translated in English. Announcing the list, Chair of the judging panel, Christopher Ricks commented “Some of these men and women are in their eighties, the youngest in their forties and fifties. They write in ways that are astonishingly different.”

For this year’s prize, a total of 150 bodies of work were considered, from which the ten finalists were chosen. The Kannada language is represented this year with the inclusion of Indian writer, U.R. Ananthamurthy.

The DSC Jaipur Literature Festival is considered to be Asia’s leading literature event, celebrating national and international writers, and encompassing a range of activities including film, music and theatre. The festival has already hosted some of the best-known national and international writers including Orhan Pamuk, J.M. Coetzee, John Berendt, Kiran Desai, Christopher Hampton, Ian McEwan, Vikram Seth, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie, Pico Iyer, Simon Schama, Thomas Keneally, Hanif Kureishi, Vikram Chandra, Anoushka Shankar, Michael Frayn, Stephen Frears, Alexander McCall Smith, Donna Tartt, Tina Brown, Shashi Tharoor, Mohammed Hanif, Paul Zacharia, among many others. The Directors of the DSC Jaipur Literature Festivals are William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale and the festival is produced by Sanjoy K. Roy and Sheuli Sethi of Teamwork Productions. DSC Limited is the principal sponsor of the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival.

Teamwork is a highly versatile entertainment company with roots in the performing arts, social action and the corporate world. Our expertise lies in the area of entertainment and includes television, film – documentary and feature, and the creation and development of festivals of contemporary performing arts, visual arts, and literature across the world.

We currently produce 17 performing and visual arts festivals in 21 cities across 11countries, including Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Israel, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, UK and USA.

Teamwork produces Asia’s biggest literary gathering – the annual DSC Jaipur Literature Festival – as well as the Hay Festival in Kerala.

‘Celebrating India in Israel’, ‘Indian Summer in Canada’, ‘Eye on India in Chicago’, ‘Kahaani Festival’ and ‘Strings of the World’ are five new annual performing and visual arts festivals that have been launched in 2011-2012.