An Indian-origin Preti Taneja has won the Desmond Elliott Prize In London for her first novel, “We That Are Young”, a retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear set in modern-day India.
Taneja, who is born in the United Kingdom of patents from India, accepted the accolade at a ceremony in London’s Piccadilly on Wednesday evening. The awarding ceremony was likewise attended by fellow shortlisted authors Gail Honeyman and Paula Cocozza.
The £10,000 prize was set up by a publisher and literary agent David Elliott, who died in 2003 and stipulated his legacy should be invested in a literature award for rising talent.
The novel was chosen by a judging panel comprised of author Sarah Perry, BBC broadcaster Samira Ahmed and Chris White.
At the award ceremony, Perry said, “Samira, Chris and myself were absolutely unanimous in our love and admiration for this novel, whose scope, ambition, skill, and wisdom was, quite simply, awe-inspiring, all three of us sat together, shaking our heads, saying, ‘If this is her first novel, what extraordinary work will come next?'”
Preti, a human rights activist, had been working in New Delhi and Kashmir at the time she wrote the novel, researching the book “By Speaking to People from Different Castes, Class Backgrounds, and Religions”.
It has been called “a novel about the human heart, and its breaking point” and is said to chronicle the downfall of a family dynasty against a backdrop of the anti-corruption protests that swept across India in 2011-2012.
Hinting at the book’s rocky road to publication, the chairman of the prize’s trustees, Dallas Manderson, said, “It is with great pride and privilege that my fellow trustees and I present our judges choice of winner this year.
“We That Are Young is exactly the kind of novel that the Desmond Elliott Prize exists to discover and promote, this extraordinarily accomplished debut has flown somewhat under the radar thus far, not having received the attention and wide-spread acclaim that it so rightly deserves. Our hope is that winning the prize will help guarantee Preti’s long-term future as an author, as we’re sure it will be bright,” he added.
The novel is being published in the United States and Canada by A A Knopf and Penguin Random House in India, with various translations around the world in the pipeline.
By Sowmya Sangam
