Book News
Philip Hensher wins Royal Society Prize …for novel set in Bangladesh
Philip Hensher has been awarded the 2013 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize for his novel, Scenes from Early Life, set in Bangladesh.
In Scenes from Early Life, Hensher assumes the voice of his Bengali partner, Zaved Mahmood, who was born in Dhaka in 1970 prior to Bangladesh's birth. The book is a semi-fictional account of Zaved Mahmood's childhood, just before the Bangladesh War of Independence from Pakistan.
Margaret Drabble, one of the judges, praised the book as "an unostentatious tour de force". Author Julia Blackburn, another judge, said: "Maybe it is the fact of being an outsider, while at the same time being intimately connected with his narrator, that enabled Hensher to describe the hubbub of a country's political transition with such immediacy; we enter an unfamiliar world with him and smell and taste and hear it on all sides."
In addition to Margaret Drabble and Julia Blackburn who were joined on the judging panel by former Granta editor, Ian Jack. They wrote: "A place, whether it is a small room, a forest floor, or an entire continent, is defined by the limitations and freedoms it offers and by the layers of emotion and history it contains.
"For this prize we are trying to see where and how this elusive spirit has been best captured in a book of poetry, fiction, biography or personal memoir."
Last year's prize went to a Bengali Rahul Bhattacharya for his debut novel The Sly Company of People Who Care.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments