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Perumal Murugan's Tamil novel 'Pyre' Selected for International Booker Prize 2023 Longlist

A story of dread foreboding is set in motion when an inter-caste couple elopes in Pyre.
on Mar 15, 2023

Pyre, a Tamil novel by Indian author Perumal Murugan, is one of 13 works from Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America that have been selected for the International Booker Prize 2023 longlist, which the Booker Prize Foundation unveiled in London on Tuesday.

Murugan, 56, is the first Tamil author to make it to the longlist of 13 titles with his 2016 book Pyre, translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan.

A story of dread foreboding is set in motion when an inter-caste couple elopes in Pyre.

The prestigious literary award is given each year to a work of fiction that was initially written in any language, was translated into English, and was released in the UK or Ireland. Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell received it last year for the first-ever Hindi book, Tomb of Sand.

The contest winner, announced this year on May 23, will split the GBP 50,000 prize money with the translator of the winning piece.

Murugan, a Tamil Nadu author residing in Salem, called Pyre one of his most significant works.

Ten novels, five collections of short stories, and four poetry anthologies have been authored by the novelist, scholar, and poet who was born in Tamil Nadu. He was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award for his book One-Half Woman, which Vasudevan translated from his novel Madhorubhagan.

"Perumal Murugan is a remarkable anatomist of power and, in particular, of the pervasive, deformative violence and caste hate. His book illustrates how volatile fear and mistrust of others are by using fable-like flashes, according to the Booker Prize jury.

After demonstrations, legal action, and the burning this later award-winning work, Murugan declared himself "dead" and announced his retirement from writing in 2015.

In a 2016 court dispute involving the book, the judge ruled: "Let the author be reborn to what he is greatest at. Write."

The Booker Prize judges write that the comment was "a demand and a blessing" for Murugan to pick up writing again.

The 13 books on the long list for the Booker Prize are from 12 different nations and 11 different languages. The subject matter explored incorporates aspects of Viking legend, French horror, Caribbean gospel, Korean fairy tale, and Indian melodrama.

"Reading books from all over the world with an astonishing range of forms and subjects was really enjoyable about this experience.

In a 2016 court dispute involving the book, the judge issued the following ruling: "Let the author be reborn to what he is greatest at. Write."

The Booker Prize judges write that the comment was "a demand and a blessing" for Murugan to pick up writing again.

"Reading books from all over the world with an astonishing range of forms and subjects was enjoyable about this experience.

The head of judges for the 2023 International Booker Prize, French-Moroccan author Leela Slimani, stated, "Everyone of the judges has diverse preferences, and that is what we have sought to express in this selection.

"It honors the breadth and diversity of literary output today and the various perspectives on the novel. The reader should be able to learn this and find something that inspires or disturbs them, Slimani continued.

According to her, the list is a celebration of the power of words and authors who sought to push the boundaries of formal inquiry.

The Gospel According to the New World, the book that Maryse Conde, the 86-year-old author who is the oldest writer to ever be longlisted for the award, narrated to her husband and translator Richard Philcox. The couple is the first husband-and-wife author-translator duo to make the shortlist for the prize.

Others on the longlist include the Russian-language fiction author from Ukraine, Andrey Kurkov, nominated for his short story collection, Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv; Eva Baltasar's Boulder; Cheon Myeong-Whale; Kwan's and GauZ's Standing Heavy.

The list also contains Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov, a writer from Bulgaria, and Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth, a writer from Norway.

French author Laurent Mauvignier's The Birthday Party; German author Clemens Meyer's While We Were Dreaming; and Spanish author Guadalupe Nettel's Still Born.

The list also featured the works Ninth Building by Chinese author Zou Jingzhi and A System So Beautiful It Is Blinding by Swedish author Amanda Svensson.

Six novels from this longlist will be chosen as finalists for this year's award on April 18 at the London Book Fair.

For each of the works that made the shortlist, a GBP 5,000 award will be split equally between the author and translator.

On May 23, the International Booker Prize 2023 winner will be revealed at an event in London's Sky Garden, and the author and translator will each receive GBP 50,000 as part of the award.

To read a book that has been translated from another language is to go on a worldwide voyage, according to Fiammetta Rocco, Administrator of the International Booker Prize. The judges paid great attention to what the authors and their translators were saying to us and how they were telling it.

The panel discussed the value of humor, form, structure, creativity, poetry, ethics, and character in fiction. It demonstrates that reading knows no boundaries through fables, myths, legends, and sagas.