Amitav Ghosh, Jerry Pinto and Namita Gokhale on the shortlist for the Crossword Book Jury Awards

Amitav Ghosh, Pankaj Mishra, Jerry Pinto, Namita Gokhale and Josy Joseph are among the authors named in the shortlist for this year’s Crossword Book Jury Awards in four categories – fiction, non-fiction, children’s books and translations. This list, announced on Tuesday, comes weeks after the nominees in the Popular Choice category were named.

Writers such as Vikram Seth, Suketu Mehta, Kiran Desai and William Dalrymple are among the earlier winners of the Crossword Book Awards. It was founded in 1998 to act as an Indian counterpart to international literary wards, such as the Man Booker Prize and Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.

“Fortunately for us, 2017, the 25th year of Crossword Bookstores, has given us many reasons to continue celebrating the quality of Indian writing in English,” said Maulik Desai, head of Crossword Bookstores.

The award comes with a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh for winners in each of the four categories of the Jury Award and Rs 1 lakh for winners of the Popular Choice category.

Here is the complete list of shortlisted titles:

Fiction

• Murder in Mahim, Jerry Pinto (Speaking Tiger)
• The Association of Small Bombs, Karan Mahajan (Harper Collins India)
• Savithri’s Special Room and Other Stories, Manu Bhattathiri (Harper Collins India)
• Things to Leave Behind, Namita Gokhale (Penguin Viking)
• Harilal and Sons, Sujit Saraf (Speaking Tiger)

Non-fiction

• The Great Derangement, Amitav Ghosh (Penguin Random House)
• Borderlands: Travels across India’s Boundaries, Pradeep Damodaran (Hachette India)
• Age of Anger, Pankaj Mishra (Juggernaut)
• A Feast of Vultures, Josy Joseph (Harper Collins India)
• An Era of Darkness, Shashi Tharoor (Aleph Book Company)

Children’s Books

• How old is Muttajji?, Roopa Pai and Kaveri Gopalakrishnan (Pratham Books)
• Two, Paro Anand, Garima Gupta, Kaveri Gopalakrishnan and Orjan Persson (Scholastic)
• Hot Chocolate is Thicker than Blood, Rupa Gulab (Duckbill Books)
• Muezza and Baby Jaan, Anita Nair (Penguin Random House India)
• Monkey Trouble and other Grandfather stories, Ruskin Bond and Priya Kurian (Rupa Publications)

Translations

• A Preface to Man, Subash Chandran, translated from Malayalam by Fathima EV (Harper Perennial India)
• I Want to Destroy Myself, Malika Amar Shaikh, translated from Marathi by Jerry Pinto (Speaking Tiger)
• Zindaginama, Krishna Sobti, translated from Hindi by Moyna Mazumdar and Neer Kanwal Mani
• The Saga of Muziris, A Sethumadhavan, translated from Malayalam by Prema Jayakumar (Niyogi Books)
• Bara, U R Ananthamurthy translated from Kannada by Chandan Gowda (Oxford University Press)