Manu Joseph’s second novel THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE has been Longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2013. This $50,000 prize has previously been won by M Naqvi for Home Boy, by Shehan Karunatilaka for Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew and by Jeet Thayil for Narcopolis.
Others on the longlist include Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya, Philip Hensher, Mohsin Hamid and Nadeem Aslam. The shortlist for the DSC Prize will be revealed on Wednesday, November 20, 2013 at The London School of Economics in London. The winner will be announced at the DSC Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2014.
Set in Madras in the 1990s, where every adolescent male is preparing for the toughest exam in the world, THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE is a powerful and darkly comic story involving an alcoholic's probe into the minds of the sober, an adolescent cartoonist's dangerous interpretation of absolute truth, an inner circle of talented schizophrenics and the pure love of a 12-year-old boy for a beautiful girl.
THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE is published by John Murray in the UK, Norton in the US and HarperCollins in Canada and India. Earlier this year it was a Top Ten bestseller in Holland, where Podium publish, and it has just been released as a lead title for C.H.Beck in Germany.
Manu Joseph’s first novel, SERIOUS PEOPLE, won the Hindu Best Fiction award, and was shortlisted for various prizes including Man Asian Literary Prize and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.
In November he will be in Belgium, with events including a Public interview in Leuven on 26 November and a Reading Club in Passa Porta on 28 November.
Praise for Manu Joseph:
'Manu Joseph really is a fine storyteller. His narrative is rich with detail.' - Antara Dev Sen, The Asian Age
'Manu Joseph is brilliant' - Tom Sutcliffe, BBC Radio 4
'A searing new voice.' -- Megan O'Grady, Vogue
Praise for THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE:
'A cocktail of character, culture and religion … exquisitely phrased without an excess of sentimentality.' -- The Daily Telegraph
'Tense and intriguing … [with] striking observations… THE ILLICIT HAPPINESS OF OTHER PEOPLE is an engaging read that leaves readers with plenty to think about afterwards.' -- David Hebblethwaite, We Love This Book
'Both wittily funny and darkly serious.' -- Harry Ritchie, Daily Mail