At the end of November the shortlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was revealed at LSE. Sonali Campion conducted interviews at the event with the prize’s co-founder Surina Narula MBE, shortlisted author Romesh Gunesekera and chair of the judging panel Keki Daruwalla. On the eve of the Jaipur Literature Festival where the DSC Prize winner will be announced, India at LSE shares their reflections on the prize, the shortlist and writing about South Asia

Daruwalla, Keki

Gunesekera, Romesh

Narula, Surina

LSE Research Online

2015-1-16DSC Prize Interviews: Celebrating on South Asian Literatureblogs.lse.ac.uk /southasia/2015/01/16/dsc-prize-interviews-reflections-on-south-asian-literature/At the end of November the shortlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature was revealed at LSE.Sonali Campion conducted interviews at the event with the prize’s co-founder Surina Narula MBE , shortlistedauthor Romesh Gunesekera and chair of the judging panel Keki Daruwalla. On the eve of the Jaipur LiteratureFestival where the DSC Prize winner will be announced, India at LSE shares their reflections on the prize, theshortlist and writing about South Asia.It’s the fifth year anniversary: how did the prize come about?Surina Narula: The drive was at the Jaipur Literature Festival which we started where we met a lot of writers andothers. We talked about how there is the Booker Prize, but then you have to be published in England to qualify forthat. There was no prize to recognise writings of the region, or written in local languages. So this was a placenobody had been, particularly because it also gives prizes to translations.The main idea of this whole prize is that we sitting in the West – I’ve been living here for 20 years – can understandthat region better. Because at the end of the day we are all human beings. It’s only the culture, the place we comefrom that separates us. So if we can understand those histories, understand the culture, the differences will lessen,and we will be able to do better work as well. I mean if I as a social anthropologist, trying to empower womenthrough my work, if I understand the real issues and problems through the literature I can do much better work. Sofor me the Prize was very interesting because I understood societies like I had never understood them before:Bangladesh women highlighted in The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam, Jamil Ahmad’s book on Pakistan’s feudalsociety – I would never have understood what feudal society means today. So for that I think the prize is quiteimportant.A lot of the novels seem to be quite political. Is it something that comes specifically from the South Asiancontext?SN: Now I slightly differ. I don’t think they are political but all said and done when you read a book – even if it’s aboutrelationships – somehow the history of a place seeps in. For example, Khalid Hosseini’s book And then theMountains Echoed is a story of love between a brother and sister set in Afghanistan and in America. I don’t think it’spolitical and yet, at some point, yes the history seeps in that the girl was sold. It can really happen in these countriesthat a girl is sold. How can you extricate yourself from these histories or realities?I may have lived in the UK for 20 years but my mother still tells me her stories of 1947. My father lost his mother, shewas hacked to death. So was his entire family of brothers and cousins and sisters and their children. He had nevergot over it, he always talked about it. But how can you extricate yourself? Without being choosing to be political, itcomes out in the writing. You know Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland? It’s about two brothers, their stories. But it is setin Calcutta in the 1950s and 1960s so gets linked to the political scene in Calcutta, you cannot separate the two. It’sgoing to take two more generations I guess, before we forget.But should we be forgetting? Isn’t it part of the role of literature to help future generations engage with thepast?SN: Only insofar as the past reflects them, and makes them understand the present. If the past is going to reinforcereligious separation, cultural separation or some incident, for example the British rule in India…we got ourindependence 50 years ago. We cannot blame today’s Britain for what happened so it’s better to move on, exceptwhere it helps us understand where those people are coming from, and to understand current problems, like whythere is so much poverty in India. But we should not remember history as something to hold against others. Weshould move on.1/3***Congratulations for being selected for the shortlist. One of the great things about your book is that it bringsout a light side as well as a heavy side of the situation in Sri Lanka. How challenging is it to strike thatbalance?Romesh Gunesekera: It’s one of the issues that I have, in a sense, dealt with all my life. My first book came outaround about the time, or my first writing came out at a time when Sri Lanka was at the beginning of this traumaticperiod, back in 1983. And so whenever I’ve touched on Sri Lanka I’ve had to deal with really quite a difficult reality.Difficult politically, difficult socially, all sorts of things.At the same time, I deeply believe that in imaginative fiction there has to be a level of enjoyment. How you do that isone of the things that all writers have to deal with. Think of someone like Dickens for example, who wrote aboutterribly traumatic things and actually very effectively to make social change. At the same time there’s nothing funnierthan Dickens – that combination is very powerful. And it is something I guess that I have tried to deal with, mixing akind of lightness with the heaviest of subjects. Right from my early books it’s been like that. One or two are a bitdarker, but with this one it was quite important for me to work out how do you write about a situation like this whereit’s difficult to think about – the past is traumatic,  the future is very very uncertain, and the present can be quitescary.You mentioned the book has come at quite an important time – perhaps you can expand on that?RG: For me the book is important because…I saw it as a very peculiar challenge because as I write fiction I wantthe books to have something which is a life beyond time. It has to be something that you read and feel that it’s freshnow, you read in 20 years and you think it’s fresh then. And I’ve been lucky enough with my early books, people findthem for the first time today and I think they find them reasonably real. The trouble with this moment in time is that Ifeel that there’s so much change going, and so much manipulation of our environment going on – not only in SriLanka. Our memories are being managed, our past is transformed. And most importantly our language is beingcontrolled. Not controlled, but it’s been changed and manipulated. And therefore to write a book that makes sense ofnow and will make sense later is a peculiar challenge today, more so than in the past.And on the topic of language, the book obviously has a very satisfying language – how much do you thinkabout the tone of the language, not just the words?RG: It is something I’ve always been very conscious of. One of the things all my books have been about islanguage. It’s most evident in my first novel Reef you have a person who’s telling their story but in the course of thebook you see him taking control of his language, so that the English language becomes his language, and he can dowhat he wants with it. To some extent that is the story of our times as well, how particularly the English language isbecoming owned by all sorts of people and is also not owned by anyone. I think that is a wonderfully liberating thingand for a writer it is tremendously exciting.So to move on to my final question – a prize like this that focuses on South Asian literature. What do youmake of that?RG: I do admire the way they’ve designed the prize, because although it has a South Asian focus, that’s almost theonly boundary. It’s open to anyone anywhere, nationality isn’t important, which I think is a great thing, particularlythese days when people talk about multiple identities, immigration and so on. It’s also great that even the definitionof a novel is pretty open: the judges are left to decide what works. So I think those are very enlightened rules, whichyou don’t get in most prizes.***2/3So tell me about your experience as a judge for the DSC PrizeKeki Daruwalla: I was asked to be the chair of the jury and I loved it. It was a big commitment so I haven’t written aword for six months, when normally I’m writing all the time. But reading was a very great pleasure. I’ve kept awayfrom reading for a very long time. Khushwant Singh once told me that if you read you won’t be able to write, meaningyou need the time. If you have a day job, and you read where will you have the time to write?When you are reading, how do you judge the books?KD: You read a book, you react to it. I reacted to Khaled Hosseini very favourably so he was in the longlist. You alsonotice trends – the novelists go back to their own formulae. For example, there is a sort of a policy with a lot ofnovelists who want to cater to two worlds, both South Asia and the West. Writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, very very finewriter – she’ll write about America, she’ll also write about Bengal and the connection, the nexus, how people live,how they go back and forth. That’s her strong suit and so far she has been sticking to it. That happens withnumerous authors, for example in A God in Every Stone? by Kamila Shamsie, another of the shortlisted books.It was a difficult task to zero in on a shortlist from such formidable longlist. There were moments of great beauty inthe multiple narratives and the jury was impressed by the deep structure of each book and the way characters weredeveloped. We were also glad to find that the plots were uniformly organic and the writers did not succumb toformulaic writing. Most of the novels grappled with the socio-political realities on the ground. All of them did so inways that were moving, challenging, and thought-provoking.The DSC Prize winner 2015 will be announced on 22 nd January. To read more about the event and the shortlistedbooks see India at LSE’s event blog posted in December.About the IntervieweesSurina Narula MBE  is a charity patron, with over 20 years experience in the strategic development ofsome of the world’s largest charities. Mrs. Narula is also an accomplished entrepreneur, working in thefamily business, the DSC Group, an international conglomerate focused on real estate, construction,infrastructure and retail.Romesh Gunesekera is a Sri Lankan-born British writer. His most recent novel Noontide Toll has beenshortlisted for the DSC Prize.Keki Daruwalla is an Indian writer and poet.  He written more than 12 books and published his firstnovel “For Pepper and Christ” in 2009. Note:  This article gives the views of the interviewees, and not the position of the India at LSE blog, norof the London School of Economics. Please read ourcomments policy before posting. Copyright © 2016 London School of Economics3/3

DSC prize interviews: celebrating on South Asian literature

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

LSE Research Online