Kerala author Anees Salim bags fiction award

Mumbai: Kerala-based writer Anees Salim has won the Raymond Crossword Book Award for Indian Fiction while Samanth Subramanian picked up the prize in the Indian Non Fiction category for his "This Divided Island: Stories from the Sri Lankan War."

The Crossword Award, across five categories, each carrying a cash prize of Rs 1 lakh, a trophy and a citation were given out at a function at the NCPA here on Wednesday.

Salim, who was born in Varkala and currently works for an advertising agency has written four novels so far. Salim's book trumped "The Competent Authority" by Shovon Chowdhury, "The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baske" by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, "The Smoke is Rising" by Mahesh Rao, "This Place by Amitabha Bagchi" and "Odysseus Abroad" by Amit Chaudhuri.

Journalist writer Subramanium's non fiction, which delves into stories from Sri Lanka during the war won the prize over others shortlisted namely Rana Dasgupta for "Capital", T M Krishna for "A Southern Music", Maria Aurora Couto for "Filomena's Journeys", Arun Ferreira for "Colours of the Cage: A Prison Memoir," and "Public Secrets of Law: Rape Trials in India" by Pratiksha Baxi.

Indian-born British writer, literary critic and translator Lakshmi Holmstrom won the Indian language translation category award for her English translation of "Children, Women, Men" first written by noted Tamil writer Sundara Ramaswamy also known as Su.Ra.

Competing for the same prize were authors Jerry Pinto who translated "Cobalt Blue" written in Marathi by Sachin Kundalkar, Aniruddhan Vasudevan who translated from Tamil Perumal Murugan's "One Part Woman,"  Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, for "The Mirror of Beauty" in Urdu, Keerti Ramachandra for translating "A Dirge for the Dammed" by Marathi writer Vishwas Patil and Rakshanda Jalil for her translation of "The Death of Sheherzad" penned in Urdu by Intizaar Hussain.