Tata Lit Fest announces Literary Awards shortlists for 2021

Jamshedpur, Nov 11:  The shortlists for the Tata Literature Live! Literary Awards were announced Thursday. The winners are traditionally announced at the closing session of the Festival. Since the Festival is online again this year due to the continuing Covid-19 pandemic, the awards ceremony will be streamed on Sunday (November 21).

In the fiction category, the shortlisted titles include ‘Asoca: A Sutra’ by Irwin Allan Sealy (Penguin Random House), ‘China Room’ by Sunjeev Sahota (Penguin Random House) and ‘Names of the Women’ by Jeet Thayil (Penguin Random House).

In the non-fiction category, ‘Born a Muslim: Some Truths About Islam in India’ by Ghazala Wahab (Aleph), ‘The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move’ by Sonia Shah (Bloomsbury) and ‘Undercover: My Journey into the Darkness of Hindutva’ by Ashish Khetan (Westland) have been shortlisted.

The First Book (Fiction) Shortlist include ‘A Bit of Everything’ by Sandeep Raina (Westland), ‘A Death in Shonagachhi’ by Rijula Das (Pan MacMillan) and ‘Gods and Ends’ by Lindsay Pereira (Penguin Random House).

The First Book (Non-Fiction) Shortlist include ‘Breathing Here is Injurious to Your Health: The Human Cost of Air Pollution and How You Can Be the Change’ by Jyoti Pande Lavakare (Hachette), ‘It’s All In Your Head, M’ by Manjiri Indurkar (Westland) And ‘Landscapes of Loss: The Story of an Indian Drought’ by Kavitha Iyer (HarperCollins)

In the Business Book of the Year category, ‘Fossil Free: Reimagining Clean Energy in a Carbon-Constrained World’ by Sumant Sinha (HarperCollins), ‘Pandemonium: The Great Indian Banking Tragedy’ by Tamal Bandyopadhyay (Roli Books) and ‘Spring: Bouncing Back From Rejection’ by Ambi Parameswaran (Westland) have been shortlisted.

Each award category is decided by an eminent jury.

Each year, the Tata Literature Live! The Mumbai LitFest confers literary awards for Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Business books published during the year, to recognise and encourage literary talent across the genres, for both established and new writers. The Awards are regarded as prestigious and are one of the main highlights of the Festival.