The JCB Prize for Literature announced its five-novel shortlist for its 2024 edition. The shortlist features two debut novels and three translations from the Bengali, Marathi and Malayalam. Jayasree Kalathil, who translated the 2020 winner Moustache (by S Hareesh), has been nominated for the prize for the third time.

The shortlist was announced in Gurugram, and included readings from the shortlisted novels by Pragya Tiwari, Rini Simon Khanna and Sunil Mehra.

The winner will be announced on November 23. The winning author will receive a cash prize of Rs 25 lakh. If the winning entry is a translation, the translator will receive an additional cash prize of Rs 10 lakh. In addition to this, each of the five authors on the shortlist will be awarded Rs 1 lakh and the translator, Rs 50,000.

The shortlisted novels are:

The jury said about the shortlist: “A deliberation on the meaning of life, a delineation of withdrawal and return, Upamanyu Chatterjee's Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life was not afraid of asking questions that cannot be answered easily. Sakyajit Bhattacharya’s electric and spare story-telling was illuminated intelligently by translator Rituparna Mukherjee in The One Legged. Sharankumar Limbale's Sanatan combined a scholar’s attentiveness and an activist’s passion for rewriting Dalit history. Sandhya Mary’s Maria, Just Maria in an elegant translation by Jayasree Kalathil gave us a memorable heroine and her acutely perceptive viewing of family dynamics. Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari’s Chronicle of an Hour and a Half is a page-turner that forces you to slow down and think of the ways in which small towns can punish those who do not toe the line.”

Here are excerpts from reviews published on Scroll of the shortlisted novels for this year’s Prize:

The One Legged, Sakyajit Bhattacharya, translated from the Bengali by Rituparna Mukherjee

The title of the novella is derived from an old Bengali folk song about a one-legged ghost who carries a knife and a pot, cutting off ears and sprinkling them with salt. Those familiar with the myth of Ekanore are likely to expect a story about the ravages of this supernatural entity. What you get, however, is much more complex. Bhattacharya draws upon the myth to reveal the darkness of the real world and the ways in which we trick children into obeying our commands.

Ekanore, or any ghost for that matter, is invoked to keep children from doing mischief, creating the impression that being good will surely keep them safe. But the world is not such a simple place – a truth we all learn the hard way.

Read the full review here.

Chronicle of an Hour and a Half, Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari

“Who can resist a mob?” asks the author. The mob becomes a congregation of strangers and it cannot be said for sure how the weapons turn up or who makes the first strike. At the end of an hour and a half, Burhan is dead and Reyhana and Nabeesumma’s lives are reduced to this single, eternal event that was perhaps etched into their fates the moment Burhan was born.

A Chronicle of an Hour and a Half is a chronicle of a death foretold. The dozen are so voices that narrate the incident do not turn into a cacophony. The multiple narratives only highlight how religion and misogyny encourage seemingly decent people to engage in unproductive – even fatal – activities.

Read the full review here.

Sanatan, Sharankumar Limbale, translated from the Marathi by Paromita Sengupta

The story streamlines itself along the events that dot the struggle for independence to highlight the never-changing lives of Mahars. It begins around the time when Maharas come to know that the East India Company is recruiting untouchables in the army and giving them weapons. The author mentions the historical landmark of the opening of a girls’ school in Pune by Mahatma Jyotiba Phule in 1848 and in 1852, a school for the children of the untouchables in Vetal Peth. The story then moves to the revolt of 1857, the assimilation of East India Company rule into British Raj and ends around Marley Minto reforms in 1918 at a somewhat hopeful note when BR Ambedkar, a professor in Sydenham College sent a petition to the governor, asking him to be made a representative of the untouchables.

Read the full review here.

Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life, Upamanyu Chatterjee

Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life is an unusual book. It has an unlikely protagonist, and a staggered journey from a small town in Italy to a nine-hundred years old religious institution, to the busy urbanity of London in the 1990s, to the complexities of a small town in a country still shaping its identity. It is scaffolded with markers of world history in the 1980s and 90s – the tragedy of Chernobyl, the Gulf War, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer, the dissolution of the USSR, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and its repercussions across borders.

It works because of its detailed research into monastic life in the Benedictine order, but also because it subverts reader expectations, and tells the extraordinary story of an ordinary man.

Read the full review here.

Maria, Just Maria, Sandhya Mary, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil

Representations of madness in literature have usually been from an ableist perspective. Maria, Just Maria, in a radical departure, tells the story from the point of view of a woman who acknowledges her own madness, and does not ascribe it to grand tragedy or a sudden rupture of reason. With great skill and sharp humour, Sandhya Mary flips the lens on madness, seeing it as just another version of normalcy.

This is a defiant story of madness that breaks your heart, just a little bit, right before it makes you chuckle at a pettily vindictive patron saint or a talking dog past his prime. The dedicated reader will also be rewarded with a very satisfying tying of loose ends in the enigmatic last line of the novel. Maria, Just Maria, is that promising debut novel you cannot not read.

Read the full review here.