Sleeping on Jupiter, Anuradha Roy's third novel at the centre of which is the sexual abuse of a young, orphan girl by a sham godman in an Indian temple town, has made it to the long list of the 2015 Man Booker Prize which was announced in London on Wednesday. The £50,000 prize, awarded annually to any author of an "original novel written in English", irrespective of geography, is one of the most anticipated and highly regarded of literary prizes.
With this, Indians, both resident and non-resident, have been making the Man Booker long list for four years in a row -- all three of Roy's predecessors, Neel Mukherjee's The Lives of Others (2014), Jhumpa Mukherjee's The Lowland (2013) and Jeet Thayill's Narcopolis (2012) made it to the short-list as well.
Among the other nominees on the 2015 list are The Green Road by Irish novelist Anne Enright who won the Man Booker in 2007, Two of the names featuring on the long-list -- Tom McCarthy and Andrew O'Hagan had made it as far as the shortlist, while American author Marilynne Robinson was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize twice in 2011 and 2013.
The only Indian author to have won the prize, other than Arundhati Roy who was the first to get it in 1997, was Kiran Desai (Inheritance of Loss, 2006). Several others have made it to the long and short lists -- Indra Sinha (Animal's People, 2007), Manil Suri (The Death of Vishnu, 2001) and Anita Desai (Fasting, Feasting, 1999).
