Published in the US by W.W. Norton, Manu Joseph's debut novel SERIOUS MEN has won the 2011 PEN Open Book Award. The runner up was John Murillo with UP JUMP THE BOOGIE. Please click here for a list of all PEN prizes and their 2011 winners.
Manu Joseph will be appearing at the Edinburgh Book Festival this year, and SERIOUS MEN is also up for the Newton First Book Award, for which readers can vote here. Manu's event at the Festival will take place on Thursday 25 August (7-8:15pm). Please click here for more information on the event and here for more information about the author.
Manu Joseph's debut has already won the Hindu Best Fiction Award 2010 and been shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize, the Commonwealth Prize, and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.
SERIOUS MEN is published in the UK by John Murray, by Harpercollins in Canada and India, and has been sold in Brazil (Record), Denmark (Thaning & Appel), Germany (Klett Cotta & Suhrkamp), Holland (Podium), Italy (Edizioni Dedalo), Serbia (Laguna), and Spain (El Aleph). It will also be published in Tamil by Ethir Veliyedu in India.
PRAISE for Manu Joseph
'One of the strongest debuts of 2010, this bittersweet Mumbai tale of high minds and low plots [is] more LUCKY JIM than WHITE TIGER…Touching, hilarious, this collision between the Mumbai of stars and of mud rediscovers a deep Indian vein of humane and sophisticated comedy.' -- Independent
'Manu Joseph shows how petty jealousies in India can motivate and divide as surely as major societal differences. His skills as a writer are tremendous - he invests even the most ordinary interactions with keenly observed human quirks, and almost every sentence is a joy to read for its ingeniously constructed language. This is a compellingly entertaining novel - witty, subversive, extraordinarily perceptive, deliciously wicked.' -- Manil Suri, author of THE DEATH OF VISHNU
'Arguably the best of the recent crop of novels by Indian writers.' -- Anis Shivani, Huffington Post
'The finest comic novelists know that a small world can illuminate a culture and an age. With this funny-sad debut, Joseph does just that for surging, fractious India.' -- Boyd Tonkin, Independent
'Manu Joseph's satirical tale of an ostensibly new India still in thrall to its caste-ridden and sexist traditions is so much more than a mere comic caper.' -- Catherine Taylor, The Guardian
'Manu Joseph's first novel elegantly describes collisions with an unyielding status quo, ably counterpointing the frustrations of the powerless with the unfulfilling realities of power. With this astute comedy of manners he makes a convincing bid for his own recognition as a novelist of serious talent, the latest addition to a roster of Indian writers who are creating fine literary art from their country's fearsome contradictions.' -- Peter Carty, Independent