Mukundan’s Delhi: A Soliloquy honoured

New Delhi: M Mukundan’s “Delhi:  A Soliloquy”, translated from Malayalam by Fathima EV and Nandakumar K, was announced winner  of the JCB Prize for Literature on  Saturday.

This is the third win for a Malayalam translation since the Rs 25- lakh award’s first edition in 2018,  the earlier being “Jasmine Days”  (2018) by Benyamin and S Hareesh’s  “Moustache” (2020).

Besides the cash amount, Mukundan won a trophy created by Delhi  artist duo Thukral & Tagra, titled  ‘Mirror Melting’

“This is an award of great magnitude. It gives the certain book and  its author an immense visibility, deleting all the borders of culture and  languages. This award will help me  to reach out to readers, non-Malyali  readers in particular, across the  English speaking countries even  beyond that if the book is translated into other languages,” said  the winning author in the hybrid  awards ceremony.

The book was selected by a panel  of five judges -- author and literary  translator Sara Rai (Chair), designer and art historian Annapurna  Garimella, author and translator  Shahnaz Habib, journalist and editor Prem Panicker, and writer and  podcaster Amit Varma.

Hailed as a contemporary classic  in Malayalam, “Delhi: A Soliloquy”  published by Westland, is about ordinary people whose lives and stories have leached into the very soil  and memories of Delhi.

It is an account of life in Delhi  in unusually difficult times: the  India-China and Indo-Pak wars,  the Emergency, the anti-Sikh riots.

Rai said Mukundan’s book  “speaks with grace and poise of the  large lives of small people in a city  with a broken soul.

Clairvoyant in its human empathy, this extraordinary book is the  distillation of a lifetime of experience”. Four of Mukundan’s books  have been adapted into award-winning films. -(PTI)

Mukundan is a recipient of  multiple awards, including  Ezhuthachan Puraskaram,  the highest literary honour  given by the government  of Kerala, the Crossword  Book Award twice -- first  in 1999 for “On the Banks  of the Mayyazhi” and again  in 2006 for “Kesavan’s  Lamentations”