What on earth had I imagined would happen? Now I was here, in a foreign town, in a foreign house, without any idea of how to proceed.

The Far Field
Madhuri Vijay

ABOUT The AUTHORMadhuri 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.

The 2019 SHORTLIST

There's Gunpowder in the Air

There's Gunpowder in the Air

By Manoranjan Byapari
Translated by Arunava Sinha
A Lonely Harvest & Trial by Silence

A Lonely Harvest & Trial by Silence

By Perumal Murugan
Translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
My Father's Garden

My Father's Garden

By Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
The Far Field

The Far Field

By Madhuri Vijay
Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction

Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction

By Roshan Ali

The 2019 LONGLIST

Explore the books

The City and The Sea

The City and The Sea

By Raj Kamal Jha
Milk Teeth

Milk Teeth

By Amrita Mahale
The Queen of Jasmine Country

The Queen of Jasmine Country

By Sharanya Manivannan
A Patchwork Family

A Patchwork Family

By Mukta Sathe
A Secret History of Compassion

A Secret History of Compassion

By Paul Zacharia
There's Gunpowder in the Air

There's Gunpowder in the Air

By Manoranjan Byapari
Translated by Arunava Sinha
A Lonely Harvest & Trial by Silence

A Lonely Harvest & Trial by Silence

By Perumal Murugan
Translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan
My Father's Garden

My Father's Garden

By Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction

Ib’s Endless Search for Satisfaction

By Roshan Ali
The Far Field

The Far Field

By Madhuri Vijay

THE 2019 JURY

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

Pradip Krishen

Pradip Krishen

Filmmaker & environmentalist (Chair)

Pradip Krishen is a filmmaker who taught himself botany and became an ‘ecological gardener’, restoring degraded habitats with native plants, mostly in the desert regions of western India. He is currently Project Director of the Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park, Jodhpur, the Abha Mahal garden, Nagaur and Kishan Bagh, Jaipur, and he curates the garden of the Calico Museum, Ahmedabad. He has written The Trees of Delhi: A Field Guide and The Jungle Trees of Central India: A Field Guide For Tree-Spotters. His films include Massey Sahib (1986), In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1988) and Electric Moon (1991).
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Anjum Hasan

Anjum Hasan

Author & critic

Anjum Hasan is the author of the novels The Cosmopolitans, Neti, Neti and Lunatic in my Head, the short story collections A Day in the Life and Difficult Pleasures, and the poetry collection Street on the Hill. Anjum was, until recently, Books Editor at The Caravan. She has been Charles Wallace Writer-in-Residence at the University of Canterbury and visiting professor of creative writing at Ashoka University. She is currently a Homi Bhabha Fellow. Her short stories, essays and poems have been published in Granta, Baffler, Five Dials, Wasafiri, Drawbridge, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Asia Literary Review, Caravan, and several anthologies.
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K R Meera

K R Meera

Author

K R Meera writes fiction in Malayalam and essays in English, and has published four novels, five novellas, six collections of short fiction, two children’s novels and two collections of essays. She has won all the major Malayalam literary awards, including the Kendra Sahitya Akademi Award, Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award (for best novel and for best short fiction), the Vayalar Award and the Odakuzhal Award. Her works in translation include Hangwoman, The Poison of Love, The Unseeing Idol of Light, Yellow is the Colour of Longing and The Gospel of Yudas.
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Parvati Sharma

Parvati Sharma

Author

Parvati Sharma began her writing career with The Dead Camel and Other Stories of Love, which earned her praise for its depictions of love and sexuality in urban India. Her novella, Close to Home, was acclaimed as ‘tender, acute and pulsing with real Indian life’. She has also written a book for children, The Story of Babur, and, most recently, a historical biography, Jahangir: An Intimate Portrait of a Great Mughal. Sharma lives in New Delhi, where she has worked as a travel writer, editor and journalist.
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Arvind Subramanian

Arvind Subramanian

Economist

Arvind Subramanian was Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India and is now a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard University. His award-winning book Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China's Economic Dominance was published in September 2011. In 2011 Foreign Policy named him one of the world's top 100 global thinkers. He has written on India, growth, trade, development, institutions, aid, climate change, oil, intellectual property, the WTO, China, and Africa. He has published widely in academic and other journals.
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