NEW DELHI: Vinod Kumar Shukla, among the most distinctive and distinguished of contemporary Hindi writers, will receive the 2023 PEN/Nabokov award for achievement in international literature, a press release by PEN America said.
The award, to be presented on Thursday, “is conferred annually to a living author whose body of work is of enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship,” the release said.
Born in Rajnandgaon in what’s now west Chhattisgarh, Shukla’s most acclaimed works include Naukar Ki Kameez (The servant’s shirt) which was adapted by auteur Mani Kaul into a feature film in 1999. Raipur-based Shukla also received the Sahitya Akademi award the same year for his novel, Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi (A window lived in the wall).
“I always believed that one has to be more local to become global,” Shukla (86) told the media in Raipur on Tuesday.
“Shukla’s prose and poetry are marked by acute, often defamiliarising, observation. The voice that emerges is that of a deeply intelligent onlooker; a daydreamer struck occasionally by wonder. Writing for decades without the recognition he deserves, Shukla has created literature that changes how we understand the modern,”the judges panel said.
Apost-graduate in krishi vigyan (agricultural science), Shukla’s first poetry collection was published in 1971. “Reading his poems leaves you enriched and improved as a human being,” said Satyanand Nirupam, editorial director, Rajkamal Prakashan.
Shukla’s “singular literary style often breaks with convention, earning comparisons to magical realism that only partly capture his striking originality. Renowned for bringing the marvelous to the ordinary, in his intimate evocations of rural and smalltown life and his interrogation of modern aspirations Shukla offers readers something universal,” the PenAmerica release also said.
His reputation has grown incrementally over decades and his books have been translated into several languages, including Italian. His language and craft has influenced a new generation of writers, said Nirupam.
Sahitya Akademi recipient poet Anamika says, “Vinod Kumar Shukla is a poet of absolute minimum. His craft believes in holding the reader’s arm, drawing him to the corner to engage him in an intimate chitchat. . . ”
Writer Amit Chaudhuri, Iranian-American writer and journalist Roya Hakakian and Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste were the judges.
With inputs from Joseph John in Raipur
The award, to be presented on Thursday, “is conferred annually to a living author whose body of work is of enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship,” the release said.
Born in Rajnandgaon in what’s now west Chhattisgarh, Shukla’s most acclaimed works include Naukar Ki Kameez (The servant’s shirt) which was adapted by auteur Mani Kaul into a feature film in 1999. Raipur-based Shukla also received the Sahitya Akademi award the same year for his novel, Deewar Mein Ek Khidki Rehti Thi (A window lived in the wall).
“I always believed that one has to be more local to become global,” Shukla (86) told the media in Raipur on Tuesday.
“Shukla’s prose and poetry are marked by acute, often defamiliarising, observation. The voice that emerges is that of a deeply intelligent onlooker; a daydreamer struck occasionally by wonder. Writing for decades without the recognition he deserves, Shukla has created literature that changes how we understand the modern,”the judges panel said.
Apost-graduate in krishi vigyan (agricultural science), Shukla’s first poetry collection was published in 1971. “Reading his poems leaves you enriched and improved as a human being,” said Satyanand Nirupam, editorial director, Rajkamal Prakashan.
Shukla’s “singular literary style often breaks with convention, earning comparisons to magical realism that only partly capture his striking originality. Renowned for bringing the marvelous to the ordinary, in his intimate evocations of rural and smalltown life and his interrogation of modern aspirations Shukla offers readers something universal,” the PenAmerica release also said.
His reputation has grown incrementally over decades and his books have been translated into several languages, including Italian. His language and craft has influenced a new generation of writers, said Nirupam.
Sahitya Akademi recipient poet Anamika says, “Vinod Kumar Shukla is a poet of absolute minimum. His craft believes in holding the reader’s arm, drawing him to the corner to engage him in an intimate chitchat. . . ”
Writer Amit Chaudhuri, Iranian-American writer and journalist Roya Hakakian and Ethiopian-American Maaza Mengiste were the judges.
With inputs from Joseph John in Raipur
