The kitchen is a battleground and the entire household, the whole clan, or shall we say the entire human race’s fortunes are decided in this small and seemingly pure and clean space

The Paradise of Food
Khalid Jawed

ABOUT The AUTHORKhalid 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.

Baran Farooqi

ABOUT THE TRANSLATORBaran Farooqi

Baran Farooqi is a professor of English at Jamia Millia Islamia University. She is the acclaimed translator of The Colours of My Heart, a selection of poems by Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Feedback Chronicle

The Paradise of Food is a celebration of human spirit, hope, loss, aspirations, and anxiety. It is a fine artistic achievement where aesthetics negotiates a difficult political trajectory that is haunting our country. The carnivalesque element makes this a modern fable.

AS Panneerselvan <span>Journalist, Editor and Columnist(Chair)</span>
AS Panneerselvan Journalist, Editor and Columnist(Chair)

This rare, beautiful book achieves, with exquisite, startling, singing prose, what few others have in recent and not-so-recent-years-a microscopic yet epic exploration of humanity in all its ugliness and beauty, its cruelty and kindnesses, its silliness and wisdom. I was left amazed, enthralled, thrilled.

Janice Pariat<span>Author</span>
Janice PariatAuthor

This singular and moving book shines a scintillating light on the violence at the heart of human civilization. The language contains several beautiful and unusual formulations that are a literary achievement by both the author and the extremely skilled translator. A literary landmark in a less celebrated genre of Urdu’s grand literary tradition, this work deserves to be widely read in India and beyond.

Amitabha Bagchi<span>Author</span>
Amitabha BagchiAuthor

The Paradise of Food works like a powerful ice-pick in the winter of civilizational crisis that has engulfed the countries of South Asia. And it does this by mobilising the poetic powers of Urdu, placing liberation above nation-building, which we think is the work of a novel. The translation is perfect and inspired.

Dr. J Devika<span>Historian and Translator</span>
Dr. J DevikaHistorian and Translator

A book of indescribable brilliance, Khalid Jawed's The Paradise of Food blazes a trail and redefines the contemporary Indian novel. Beauty and horror, sacred and profane, the book attracts and repels us as we turn each page. Our understanding of the personal and political intersect through the food and kitchen in the most unforgettable ways.

Rakhee Balaram<span>Academician and Author</span>
Rakhee BalaramAcademician and Author

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THE 2022 JURY

A distinguished jury from diverse backgrounds brings forth the Longlist, Shortlist and Winner of the JCB Prize for Literature, year on year.

AS Panneerselvan

AS Panneerselvan

Journalist, Editor and Columnist(Chair)

AS Panneerselvan (Chair) is an Indian journalist, editor and columnist. He heads the Centre for Study in Public Sphere, Roja Muthiah Research Library in Chennai. He is also the author of Karunanidhi: A Life, his definitive biography of M Karunanidhi, and the editor of an anthology of essays produced by journalist fellows, Uncertain Journeys. In 2022, the Government of Tamil Nadu has conferred him with the GU Pope Award for his literary contributions. In his extensive career in the media, he has worked with several prestigious media houses and networks, including the Sun Network, Outlook magazine, the Hindu, amongst others. His next book is the Periodic Table of Tamil Modernity: 1858 to 1968.

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Rakhee Balaram

Rakhee Balaram

Academician and Author

Rakhee Balaram is an Assistant Professor of Global Art & Art History at the University of Albany, State University of New York, where she specializes in modern and contemporary art. She is the author of Counterpractice: Psychoanalysis, Politics and the Art of French Feminism and 20th-Century Indian Art: Modern, Post-Independence, Contemporary. Her curatorial work includes Fragility, an exhibition of contemporary Indian art. Her research has been supported by the Art Histories Fellowship in Berlin, the ICI Berlin Institute of Cultural Inquiry, and the Tata SPEAR grant, among others. Balaram holds double doctorates in French Literature from Cambridge University and History of Art from The Courtauld Institute of Art.

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Amitabha Bagchi

Amitabha Bagchi

Author

Amitabha Bagchi is the author of four novels. The first, Above Average, was a bestseller. His second novel, The Householder, was published to critical acclaim, the third, This Place, was shortlisted for the Raymond Crossword Book Award 2014, and the fourth, Half the Night is Gone, won the 2019 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and was shortlisted for the 2018 JCB Prize for Literature. He has written and published several research papers over his extensive career as a researcher and professor, specialising in Computer Science.

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Dr J Devika

Dr J Devika

Historian and Translator

Dr J Devika is a historian, feminist, social critic and academician. She currently researches and teaches at the Centre for Development Studies. She has authored several books and articles on gender, politics, social reforms and development in Kerala on publications like Kafila, Economic and Political Weekly and The Wire. She has translated both fiction and non-fiction books between Malayalam and English, including the translation of Nalini Jameela's autobiography and the short stories of KR Meera and Sarah Joseph.

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Janice Pariat

Janice Pariat

Author

Janice Pariat is the author of The Nine-Chambered Heart , Boats on Land: A Collection of Short Stories and Seahorse: A Novel. She was awarded the Young Writer Award from the Sahitya Akademi and the Crossword Book Award for Fiction in 2013. In 2014, she was the Charles Wallace Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Kent, UK, and a Writer in Residence at the TOJI Residency in South Korea in 2019. Janice also teaches Creative Writing and Art History at Ashoka University. Her novel Everything the Light Touches is forthcoming.

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