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A photo of Naga writer Easterine Kire walking past Baptist College in Kohima. On Sunday night, Kire was declared Book of the Year winner for fiction at the Tata Literature Live Awards. (EM Images)[/caption]
Alice Yhoshü
Kohima, Nov. 19 (EMN): Award-winning Naga poet and author Easterine Kire has once again made the Naga name proud by winning the Book of the Year Award for fiction at the Tata Literature Live Awards 2017 with her book ‘Son of the Thundercloud’. The award was announced Sunday evening at the Tata Literature Live event in Mumbai where publishers and writers from over 100 countries are participating.
Kire’s book was long-listed alongside Arundhati Roy’s ‘Ministry of Utmost Happiness’, Sujit Saraf’s ‘Harilal and Sons’, Shahnaz Bashir’s ‘Scattered Souls’, Anees Salim’s ‘The Small Town Sea’ and Meena Kandasamy’s ‘When I Hit You’.
‘Son of the Thundercloud’ is being acclaimed as a classic allegory of love and hope.
“I loved writing that book. I had such joy writing that book. It was how I saw the boy Jesus, and imagining him growing up as a Naga boy playing with slingshots was real fun. It was easy to bring in the concepts of love and life beyond death by using our social values and our community life as a base” Kire told Eastern Mirror following the announcement of the award.
Kire, who is currently in Norway, when asked about winning the honour said: “This is the Lord’s blessing to all of us, not just to me, but His way of recognizing the Northeasterners and telling us ‘I love you guys’”.
The author maintains that if one uses a combination of fantasy and folktale, it is easy to create characters that are 'four hundred years old or beyond.' She also admitted that she began to love the characters (in her book) and they became like family to her. “I worked out some personal issues with this book...” she adds.
While acknowledging her publisher Speaking Tiger for believing in the book, Kire thanked her readers, friends and family for their support. “This means a lot to me,” she said emotionally.
On her work being shortlisted among literary heavyweights like Arundhati Roy who was the winner of the 1997 Booker Prize, Kire humbly says it was an honour to have her work alongside Roy’s. “I am a big fan of her (Roy),” she said.
The Tata Literature Live! Book of the Year Award has been constituted to recognise noteworthy work in the Indian literary space across fiction and nonfiction genres.
Kire etched a notch in literature in Nagaland as early as the 1980s. With her book ‘Kelhoukevira’ (1983), she became the first individual Naga to have a volume of poetry published, while her first novel ‘A Naga Village Remembered’ (2003) has the distinction of being 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 was selected by the Government of India to be translated into six UNESCO languages. She has authored more than 27 books.
Kire’s novel ‘Bitter Wormwood’ also got nominated for The Hindu Lit Prize in 2013 and in 2016, she was awarded The Hindu Prize for Best Fiction 2015 for her novel ‘When the River Sleeps’.