TGT Correspondent
September 26
Fuir et Revenir, the French translation of Indian novelist Prajwal Parajuly’s debut novel Where I Flee has been shortlisted for France’s prestigious Emile Guimet Prize. The book was also very recently nominated for the First Novel Prize in the country.
Parajuly’s novel, initially published in English by Quercus, was declared a ‘Book of the Year’ by The Independent in the UK, The Kansas City Star in the US, The Hindustan Times in India and numerous other publications. Parajuly was nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize in the UK and The Story Prize in the US. He also featured on the Oprah Book Club in South Africa and later went on to judge the Dylan Thomas Prize.
Land Where I Flee is a family saga, “a delightful comedy of manners” in which four Nepali-Indian siblings living in various parts of the world convene in the Himalayan town of Gangtok, in north-eastern India, to celebrate their formidable grandmother’s 84th birthday. Parajuly is originally from Gangtok, the son of an Indian father and a Nepali mother, but now divides his time between New York and Kolkata. His French translator, Benoîte Dauvergne, is based in Paris.
This year’s winner will be announced in late November at a ceremony held in the Emile Guimet Museum, in Paris, an official press release issued by Astier-Pécher Literary & Film Agency, Paris says. Previous awardees have included British writer Rana Dasgupta, South-Korean author Hwang Sok-Yong and Natsu Miyashita from Japan.
The other four writers on the shortlist are: Fang Fang (China), Shion Miura (Japan), Tsering Dondrup (Tibet), and Izumi Shiga (Japan).