Writer Upamanyu Chatterjee has won the 2024 JCB Prize for Literature for his English language novel Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life. The novel was published by Speaking Tiger.
The Rs 25 lakh cash prize was presented to Chatterjee by the CEO and MD of JCB India Deepak Shetty.
Writer Jerry Pinto, the chair of this year’s jury said, “Lorenzo Searches for the Meaning of Life is a tour de force that takes us into the depths of a man's soul and across the varied geographies of faith and reason.” Art historian Deepthi Sashidharan who was on the jury added that the novel is “breathtaking in its sweep and meticulous in its research.” Writer Tridip Suhrud said the book suggests that “the meaning of life is also about loss of meaning.” Filmmaker Shaunak said that the novel is “a masterly work and sparkles with its philosophical and literary sweep.” Artist Aqui Thami agreed that the novel “is a beautiful poignant exploration of spirituality, faith, and the human condition.”
A review published in Scroll says, “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.
The other four books on the shortlist, three of them translations, were The One Legged by Sakyajit Bhattacharya, translated from the Bengali by Rituparna Mukherjee (Antonym Collections),Chronicle of an Hour and a Half by Saharu Nusaiba Kannanari (Westland Books), Sanatan by Sharankumar Limbale, translated from the Marathi by Paromita Sengupta (Penguin Books), and Maria, Just Maria by Sandhya Mary, translated from the Malayalam by Jayasree Kalathil (HarperCollins Publishers)
The jury was chaired by author, translator, and poet Jerry Pinto, and includes scholar and translator Tridip Suhrud; art historian and curator Deepthi Sasidharan; filmmaker and writer Shaunak Sen; and artist Aqui Thami.
