Indian Author Perumal Murugan's Novel 'Pyre' Longlisted for 2023 Booker Prize

Perumal Murugan.

(Photo: Twitter/Altered by The Quint) 

Indian novelist Perumal Murugan, who declared himself "dead" as a writer following protests against his work, is among the longlisted writers for this year's International Booker Prize.

This is the first time a Tamil book has been nominated for the coveted prize.

According to French Moroccan novelist and chair of judges Leïla Slimani, the list "celebrates the variety and diversity of literary production today."

The award, and the concomitant £50,000, is awarded annually for a novel or short story collection which may have been written in any language, but was translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland.

This year's long list includes 13 nominees. Murugan has been longlisted for the prize for his work Pyre, which was translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan.

"This is the first time a Tamil novel has made it to the long list. It is very important for the language. It is significant not because it is my novel but because the selection is an acknowledgement of the literature in Tamil, in India," Murugan said, according to The Indian Express.

Highlighting the importance of southern languages, he added, "English and Hindi are spoken as Indian languages whereas the others are classified as regional tongues. That is wrong. That sort of perception will change when books from our languages - southern languages as well as non-Hindi languages from the North - make it to international award lists."

The nomination comes after Indian author Geetanjali Shree's win at the 2022 International Booker Prize for her Hindi-language novel Ret Samadhi, or Tomb of Sand.

Speaking about Murugan's Pyre, the judges of the award said, "An inter-caste couple elopes, setting in motion a story of terrifying foreboding. Perumal Murugan is a great anatomist of power and, in particular, of the deep, deforming rot of caste hatred and violence. With flashes of fable, his novel tells a story specific and universal: how flammable are fear and the distrust of others."

The other books selected in the longlist include:

• Andrey Kurkov’s Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv

• Eva Baltasar's Boulder

• Cheon Myeong-kwan Whale

• Georgi Gospodinov's Time Shelter

• Vigdis Hjorth's Is Mother Dead

• Maryse Condé’s The Gospel According to the New World

• Zou Jingzhi's Ninth Building

• Amanda Svensson's A System So Magnificent It Is Blinding

• Guadalupe Nettel's Still Born

• Clemens Meyer's While We Were Dreaming

• Laurent Mauvignier's The Birthday Party

• GauZ's Standing Heavy