Jhumpa Lahiri's recently published short story collection, Unaccustomed Earth, just won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. This award carries the largest purse ($35,000 Euros) of any short story award in the world.The award was supposed to be announced on September 21st, but the panel of judges decided to announce Lahiri as the winner instead of announcing the typical short list.
Director of the Award, Patrick Cotter, explained:
With a unanimous winner at this early stage we decided it would be a sham to compose a shortlist and put five other writers through unnecessary stress and suspense. Not only were the jury unanimous in their choice of Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth as the winner, they were unanimous in their belief that so outstanding was Lahiri’s achievement in this book that no other title was a serious contender.
That's heady praise.
3 comments:
I'll give the two of us gold stars and say "great minds think alike". Our posts look almost identical!
Have you read the collection? I haven't yet, but loved her novel *The Namesake* (and the movie was very true to the book)
I haven't read this collection yet, but I've got it on my hold list at the library. I'm looking forward to reading it. I loved The Namesake and also The Interpreter of Maladies (her first story collection).
Wow, sounds like a great book. I love short stories too. I'm putting it on my list.
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