AG-BLF Book Prize 2022 longlist announced

Every year, Atta Galatta, in association with the Bangalore Literature Festival, a platform for voices from all over India and the globe, have been striving to commemorate literary achievements with the Atta Galatta-Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize.

Instituted in 2015, the annual award are presented under nine categories of Fiction (English), Non-Fiction (English), Popular Choice, Best Cover Design and expanded categories for Children's Writing in 2022, Best Children’s Picture Book Story, Best Children’s Picture Book Illustrations, Best Children’s Book Fiction and Best Children’s Book Non-Fiction. 

An annual award is presented for Literary Achievement in Kannada to an author, celebrating their body of work and contribution to the language.

The longlist includes 12 titles each in the fiction and the non-fiction categories. The longlisted books have been sent to the Jury for shortlising, and the shortlist for this year’s prize will be announced on 15 November.

The Atta Galatta–Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize is probably the only major literary prize that considers translations, short story anthologies, eBooks and self-published works. The prize is dedicated to the brilliant voices of the year, and in an attempt to make it as inclusive as possible, entries are open to everyone.

The prize highlights the ethos of Atta Galatta and Bangalore Literature Festival: a connection to community. Each year the longlist of books considered for the prize is selected by a subterranean jury of readers.

The prize committee appoints a jury of prominent individuals from various areas of Indian literature. The members of the jury read every work of Fiction, Non-Fiction and will judge the Best Cover Design longlisted for the Prize. The jury will be the final authority on the shortlist and the winner.

The winning authors this year share a total prize amount of Rs 50,000 among themselves.

Atta Galatta is an independent bookstore in Bangalore. The bookstore aims to bring bhasha, poetry, translations, IWE classics and children’s literature back into reading currency. Working with experts for regional languages, for poetry, for children’s literature, for translations, the store carries a curated list of books in languages as varied as Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, Hindi and Bengali, a collection spanning 12,000 titles across genre and language.

The Bangalore Literature Festival, founded in 2012, is the second largest literary conclave in India, with close to 200 global and Indian authors and speakers participating each year and footfalls of 25,000 across the two-day event.

The longlist

Fiction

1 Breaking Free, Vaasanthi, translated by N Kalyan Raman (Harper Perennial)

2 Crimson Spring: A Novel, Navtej Sarna (Aleph)

3 Ger-mi-na-tion, Sufia Khatoon (Red River)

4 Lost, Hurt, Or in Transit Beautiful: Poems Rohan Chhetri (HarperCollins)

5 Qabar, KR Meera, translated by Nisha Susan (Eka / Westland Books)

6 The Blind Matriarch: A Novel, Namita Gokhale (Penguin Viking)

7 The Immortal King Rao, Vauhini Vara (4th Estate)

8 The Middle Finger, Saikat Majumdar (Simon and Schuster)

9 The Odd Book Of Baby Names, Anees Salim (Penguin Hamish Hamilton)

10 The Wait and Other Stories, Damodar Mauzo, translated by Xavier Cota (Penguin Vintage)

11 Tomb of Sand, Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell (Penguin)

12 Valli: A Novel, Sheela Tomy, translated by Jayasree Kalathil (Harper Perennial)

Non – Fiction

1 Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh: India’s Lonely Young Women and The Search for Intimacy and Independence, Shrayana Bhattacharya (HarperCollins)

2 Humans of Covid: To Hell and Back, Barkha Dutt (Juggernaut)

3 India, Bharat and Pakistan: The Constitutional Journey of a Sandwiched Civilization, J Sai Deepak (Bloomsbury)

4 Invisible Empire: The Natural History of Viruses, Pranay Lal (Penguin Viking)

5 Lords of the Deccan: Southern India from The Chalukyas and The Cholas, Anirudh Kanisetti (Juggernaut)

6 Not Just Cricket: A Reporter’s Journey Through Modern India, Pradeep Magazine (Harper Collins)

7 The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy: A Doctor’s Memoir of a Deadly Medical Crisis, Kafeel Khan (Pan Macmillan)

8 The New BJP: Modi and The Making of the World’s Largest Political Party, Nalin Mehta (Westland Books)

9 The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis, Amitav Ghosh (Penguin Allen Lane)

10 Whole Number and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India, Rukmini S (Context / Westland Books)

11 Whose Samosa is it Anyways: The Story of Where “Indian” Food Really Came From, Sonal Ved (Penguin Viking)

12 Writer Rebel Soldier Lover: The Many Lives of Agyeya, Akshaya Mukul (Penguin Vintage)