Thayil's Narcopolis was part of a shortlist of six works which included Jamil Ahmed's The Wandering Falcon, Tahmima Anam's The Good Muslim, Amitava Ghosh's River of Smoke, Mohammed Hanif's Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, Uday Prakash's The Walls of Delhi (translated into English by Jason Grunebaum).
Indian writer Anuradha Roy on Saturday won the prestigious $50,000 (Rs 33.89 lakh) DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for her novel Sleeping on Jupiter at the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka.
Reticent author Cyrus Mistry on Saturday beat off stiff competition from five other writers to become the fourth winner of the $50,000 DSC prize for South Asian literature for his book "Chronicles of a Corpse Bearer".
His debut novel The Story of a Brief Marriage, set in the backdrop of the civil war.
Manju Kapur's The Immigrant, Neel Mukherjee's A Life Apart and Amit Chaudhuri's The Immortals have been shortlisted for the prestigious award.
Three Indian writers are in the running for the $50,000 (about Rs 27,50,000) DSC South Asian literature prize given to the best novel thematically linked to the South Asian region.
Two Nobel Laureates, four listed writers of this year's Man Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists, winners of Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Crossword Prize and film stars will be the attraction at the most sought after literary event in India -- the Jaipur Literature Festival.
The going has never been easy for author Cyrus Mistry, who suffers from a nervous disorder. The reclusive author, who bagged the prestigious South Asian literature award, talks openly to P B Chandra about his illness and how writing has helped him cope with it.