Click to play videoLondon: India born author Indra Sinha's novel Animal's People has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize this year. The shortlist announced on Thursday in London has five other books including Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach.
“Animal's People by Indra Sinha is imaginative and intriguing,” said chair of judges, Man Booker Prize Jury, Howard Davies.
The book, based on the Bhopal Gas tragedy of 1984 is the story of Animal, a crippled orphan in a town called Khaufpur.
It is written as a first person account using local dialect that adds the authenticity and the humour in the story.
The author has been a campaigner for the Bhopal Medical Appeal and hopes the book will draw attention to the continued suffering of people who have been ignored for years. And that's what he hopes the Booker shortlist will do.
“For me the ideal will be not to be well known like Salman Rushdie but to be allowed to be decently obscure in the French countryside. If it gets the book to be widely read, then I am happy,” said Sinha.
Three Indian authors have won the Booker Prize so far. Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and last year's winner Kiran Desai. So will it be an encore this year, we will have to wait until October 16 for that when the prize is announced.
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