Satchidanandan, Thayil among 24 Sahitya Akademi awardees

New Delhi, Dec 20 (IANS) K. Satchidanandan, Chadrakant Devtale, Jeet Thayil, Chandana Goswami, Subrata Mukhopadhayay and Jayant Pawar are among writers and poets representing 24 languages who have been honoured with this year’s Sahitya Akademi awards.

In all, 12 volumes of poetry, six short stories, four novels, an autobiography and a book of criticism have been chosen for the award, said a Sahitya Akademi release Thursday.

There are 12 poets on the list: Guneshwar Musahary (Bodo), Bal Krishan ‘Bhaura’ (Dogri), H.S. Shivaprakash (Kannada), Makhan Lal Kanwal (Kashmiri), Kashinath Samba Lolienkar (Konkani), Darshan Buttar (Punjabi), Aaidan Singh Bhati (Rajasthani), Ramji Thakkura (Sanskrit), Krishna Kumar Toor (Urdu) besides Devtale (Hindi), Sachidanandan (Malayalam) and Thayil (English).

Novelists Jodha C. Sanasam (Manipuri) and D. Selvaraj (Tamil) besides Mukhopadhayay (Bengali) and Goswami (Assamese) have also won the award.

Short story writers Uday Thulung (Nepali), Gaurahari Das (Odiya), Gangadhar Hansda (Santhali), Indra Vaswani (Sindhi) and Peddibhotla Subbaramaiah (Telegu) besides Pawar (Marathi) have also been honoured.

Chandrakant Topiwala (Gujarati) has been chosen for his book of literary criticism and Sefalika Verma for her autobiography.

The books chosen for the award include “Thol” by Selvaraj, “Birasan” by Mukhopadhayay, “Patkari Ipare Mor Desh” by Goswami, “These Errors Are Correct” by Thayil and “Marannu Vecha Vaastukkal” by Satchidanandan.

The winners were chosen by a jury of three members in each of 24 languages. The awards will be given Feb 18.

IANS 2012-12-20 20:26:04