Let’s ExploreThe Plague Upon us

  • Author: Shabir Ahmad Mir
The Plague Upon us
The Plague Upon us

A domino effect of violence, told through Kashmir.

Kashmir in the 1990s, a setting not very different from today... As blood drips from the pellet-stricken eyes of young men, Oubaid watches a plague of blindness spreading through the streets of his homeland, Kashmir. A voice in his head tells him that he knows who brought this plague, but acknowledging it would mean Oubaid must confront his past and the horrors he has witnessed... The Plague upon Us portrays Oubaid's memories from the perspectives of four residents of the Kashmir valley who were once childhood friends - a militant, a rich man, the daughter of a social climber and a member of the Brotherhood. As the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle fall into place, there unravels the full tragedy of a people looking for solace and a place to call home. A searing and power-packed reflection of our times, this brilliantly crafted novel announces the arrival of an arresting new voice in contemporary fiction.

ABOUT THE AUTHORShabir Ahmad Mir

Shabir Ahmed Mir is a writer and poet and has been awarded the Reuel International Prize for fiction in 2017. This is his first novel.

Shabir Ahmad Mir

The JCB Prize in Videos

The Prize Winnersover the years

The JCB Prize for Literature was first awarded in 2018, since then the Prize has been awarded to 6 books.

Perumal Murugan

Perumal Murugan

Perumal Murugan is an Indian author, scholar, and literary chronicler who writes in Tamil. He has written twelve novels, six collections of short stories, six anthologies of poetry, and many non-fiction books. Ten of his novels have been translated into English: Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, Current Show, One Part Woman, A Lonely Harvest, Trail by Silence, Poonachi or the Story of a Goat, Resolve, Estuary, Rising Heat, and Pyre. He was a professor of Tamil at the Government Arts College in Salem Attur and Namakkal.

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Khalid Jawed

Khalid Jawed

Khalid Jawed is one of the leading Urdu novelists today. He is the author of fifteen works of fiction and non-fiction and is a recipient of the Katha Award, the Upendranath Ashk Award, and the UP Urdu Academy Award. He is a professor at Jamia Millia Islamia University.

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S. Hareesh

S. Hareesh

S. Hareesh is the author of three short-story collections: Adam, which received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award, Rasavidyayude Charithram, and Appan. He is also a recipient of the Geetha Hiranyan Endowment, the Thomas Mundassery Prize, and the V.P. Sivakumar Memorial Prize. Hareesh is also the author of two screenplays - for the film Aedan, which received the Kerala State Award for best screenplay in 2017, and for the 2019 film Jallikattu, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and won a silver peacock at the International Film Festival of India. Hareesh works in the revenue department, and hails from Neendoor in Kottayam district, Kerala.

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Madhuri Vijay

Madhuri Vijay

Madhuri Vijay was born and raised in Bengaluru and now lives in Hawaii where she teaches children at a school is a schoolteacher. "A fortunate benefit of teaching young children,” she says "is that they neither know nor care about how many words you managed to write that day or whether you’ve hit upon the perfect metaphor - working with them is a refreshing and humbling reminder to keep one’s work in proper perspective.” She’s a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Her writing has appeared in Best American Non-Required Reading, Narrative Magazine and Salon, among other publications. In 2010, she wrote a short story about a mother and a daughter and a Kashmiri man. "It was a maudlin story-abysmal, really-but I grew interested in writing a novel about Kashmir.” The Far Field is her first book.

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Benyamin

Benyamin

Benyamin was born 1971 in Nhettur, Kerala. He moved to Bahrain in 1992. Until the age of twenty-one, he knew nothing of literature: "Cricket was my world, better living standards were my aim." When he reached The Gulf, he felt a loneliness that triggered reading and eventually led to writing: "I began with letters to friends. They accepted my words." Today he is an author of over twenty books. Aadujeevitham or Goat Days is his most successful novel and has won him the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award. He returned from the Middle East to his native state of Kerala in 2013, two years after the Arab revolution ended. A former electrical engineer and now a full-time writer, he lives alone and cooks for himself daily: "I feel, and my friends certify, that I have a talent in it too."

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