Akhil Sharma Wins Dublin International Literary Award

Akhil Sharma has won the world’s richest award for a single novel.
•    Sharma’s Family Life, a mostly autobiographical novel that tells of how a family moves from Delhi to New York, where the older brother has an accident that leaves him brain-damaged and in need of 24-hour care, was named winner of the International Dublin literary award.
•    The India-born American writer describes the almost 13 years it took him to write Family Life as “a nightmare – like chewing stones, chewing gravel”.
•    Sharma’s immediate intentions for his €100,000 cheque include grand and ordinary ambitions. 
•    The Irish prize is unusual in that contenders, which must be published in English or English translation, are nominated by public libraries from around the world, with Family Life put forward by the India International Centre library in New Delhi and by Jacksonville public library in the US. 
•    It was one of 160 titles up for the prize, with nominations spanning 43 countries.