Alice Yhoshu
KOHIMA, OCTOBER 25
Noted Naga poet and author, Easterine Kire’s book ‘When the River Sleeps’ has been shortlisted for The Hindu Prize for Best Fiction 2015 among five others.
The shortlist, made by a panel of distinguished judges comprising well-known authors and critics K Satchidanandan, Susie Tharu, Antara Dev Sen, Arshia Sattar and columnist and novelist Pradeep Sebastian, was announced on Saturday.
The winner of The Hindu Prize 2015 will be chosen from the six shortlisted books and will be announced at The Hindu Lit For Life event scheduled to be held in January 2016.
“I am so grateful to the Lord,” says Easterine. “Even if the prize goes to someone, to get nominated along with top writers from India, I’m grateful,” she told Eastern Mirror.
Easterine, who is currently in Delhi, said she was at an airport when she got the news of her book making it to the shortlist.
“My first reaction was, I was so excited I wanted to jump, but I couldn’t!” she exclaimed.
Pointing out that Nagas are a community-based people (when a Naga does something, the whole community owns it), she expresses hope that the recognition will do the community proud.
Talking about ‘When the River Sleeps’, Easterine said the book is a spiritual fantasy with actual geographical attributes that her readers can identify. In her book, she recognizes the wealth of the Nagas in spiritual knowledge and forest etiquettes and also talks about spiritual warfare that every person wages within to deal with fear.
“I enjoyed writing this book. For me it was a journey of spiritual discovery,” she said. She revealed that most of the characters in the book were named after people from the popular social networking site Facebook (with their permission).
The author also disclosed that ‘When the River Sleeps’ which has an enigmatic ending, has a sequel coming up. She said she had already written the sequel and is very excited to launch it close on the heels of the first book getting nominated for a national literature award.
Mention may be made here that ‘When the River Sleeps’ is the second work of Easterine Kire to get shortlisted for The Hindu lit prize. Earlier, her novel ‘Bitter Wormwood’ was nominated for the same in 2013.
Easterine has etched her niche in literature in Nagaland as early as the 1980s. With her book ‘Kelhoukevira’ (1983), she became the first individual Naga poet to have a volume of poetry published, and her first novel ‘A Naga Village Remembered’ (2003) was the first Naga novel to be written/published in English by a Naga writer. She is a recipient of the Nagaland Governor’s Award for excellence in literature in 2011, and the Catalan PEN International Free Voice Award. Her novel ‘A Terrible Matriarchy’ which talks about a young girl growing up in a traditional Naga society has been selected by the Government of India to be translated into six UNESCO languages.
She launched her 25th publication, ‘The Dancing Village’, a children’s book earlier this month in Kohima.
The six books on the shortlist are:
1) When the River Sleeps by Easterine Kire.
2) Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh.
3) Odysseus Abroad by Amit Chaudhuri.
4) Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy.
5) Seahorse by Janice Pariat.
6) Patna Manual of Style by Siddharth Choudhury
