SOURCE: THEINDIANEXPRESS
The Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2021-22 jointly won by Sudeep Sen and Shobhana Kumar
The annual prize founded in 2018 recognises literary and social accomplishments.
The Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2021-22 has been jointly won by Sudeep Sen for his genre and formbender Anthropocene: Climate Change, Contagion, Consolation (Pippa Rann Books & Media, 2021) and Shobhana Kumar for her haibun collection A Sky Full of Bucket Lists (Red River, 2021).
The winners, awarded $10,000 and a Rabindranath Tagore statuette, were picked from a shortlist of 11 at India International Centre on Monday, with the Tagore Prize for social achievement going to Sanjoy K Roy, producer of the Jaipur Literature Festival.
On Sen’s winning entry, the jury said, “[he] writes a powerful and intimate testimony to the human life inexorably and agonizingly devolving, in real time and in direct confrontation with Nature that runs its rebalancing course, keeps the Death by its side and doesn’t shiver at the sight of human arrogance. The impact Anthropocene is making, as a collection of observations that directly address the conundrum of our present and our future, but also in regard to the innovative utilization of genre, is impossible to overestimate.”
On Kumar’s collection, the jury said, “What a delight it is to read this combination of jazz-like cadence, sharp wit and profound compassion! [This work] is a well of linguistic acuity that brings forth the reality of being a human in its raw and underrepresented form. Shobhana Kumar addresses unease with ease, angst with grace, and offers a unique perspective on the truth of personal struggle, behind the veneer of convention and past the bitterness of social rejection.”
The Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize was started in 2018 to annually recognise literary and social accomplishments. In 2020, the award was won by Raj Kamal Jha, Chief Editor, The Indian Express, for The City and The Sea (2019, Penguin Books), and in 2019, it was awarded posthumously to Kabir for One Hundred Poems of Kabir, translated by Rabindranath Tagore.