Source : Times of India
Journalist and writer Raghu Karnad became the second Indian to win the Windham-Campbell Prize; after Jerry Pinto who won the prize in 2016 for his novel ‘Em And the Big Hoom’. Karnad won the prestigious award for his debut book ‘The Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War’ in the non-fiction category on early Thursday (IST) in a ceremony which was held in London.
The Indian author is one of the eight winners who have been chosen across four categories this year. Each of the eight winners won $165,000 as prize money to support their writing. In terms of the award money, Windham-Campbell Prize is one of the richest literary awards worldwide.
Two winners were announced this year in each of the four categories for the prize, namely- fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry. ‘This year’s Windham-Campbell Prize recipients in fiction are Danielle McLaughlin (Ireland) and David Chariandy (Canada); in nonfiction the winners include Raghu Karnad (India) and Rebecca Solnit (United States); in poetry Ishion Hutchinson (Jamaica) and Kwame Dawes (Ghana/Jamaica/United States) are the winners and in drama the winners include, Young Jean Lee (United States) and Patricia Cornelius (Australia),’ reads a statement on the prize’s official website.
The Windham-Campbell Prize was established in 2013 by writer Donald Windham to honour his late partner Sandy Campbell. It is now co-presented by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.
This was the first time that the award was announced from an event in London. “Even though we are based at Yale, this is an international prize, and we want to celebrate this in the heart of one of the great multicultural cities of the world,” Michael Kelleher, Prize Director, said of the decision to announce live from London, during the week of the London Book Fair, in a statement on the prize’s official website.
Reacting to the news of winning the prestigious award, Raghu Karnad posted on Twitter:
