New Delhi: Acclaimed Hindi writer Vinod Kumar Shukla has won the 2023 PEN/Nabokov Award for achievement in international literature, PEN America one of the most prestigious literary prizes worldwide announced on Tuesday. The short story writer, poet and essayist, Shukla, who is considered one of the greatest contemporary writers in the Hindi language, will receive the 59th Annual PEN Literary Awards on March 2 at The Town Hall in New York.
Announcing the award, judges Amit Chaudhuri, Roya Hakakian, and Maaza Mengiste noted in a statement that Shukla's prose and poetry are "marked by acute, often defamiliarizing, 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.
"With this award, the 2023 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature acknowledges a writer as well as a tradition, or traditions, of anomalousness in literature without which we cannot fully grasp our history or inhabit our present," they said. The PEN/Nabokov award is conferred annually to a living author whose body of work is of enduring originality and consummate craftsmanship.
Previous winners have included Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Anne Carson, M. NourbeSe Philip, Sandra Cisneros, Edna O'Brien, and Adonis. "His 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 small-town life and his interrogation of modern aspirations Shukla offers readers something universal," the non-profit said in a statement.
Known for his "distinctive linguistic texture and emotional depth", Shukla received the Sahitya Akademi Award for "Deewar Mein Ek Khirkee Rahati Thi" in 1999. Other notable works by Shukla include "Naukar Ki Kameez" (1979), and a poetry collection "Sab Kuch Hona Bacha Rahega" (1992). (PTI)
