Crosswords book awards announced

MUMBAI, DECEMBER 10: The Crosswords Book Awards for the year 1999 were announced today. The awards have been instituted by Crosswords in collaboration with the British Council.

These awards were instituted only last year. Celebrated writer Vikram Seth has won the award for the first category viz, English fiction by an Indian writer, for his An Equal Music. Geeta Krishnan Kutty and M Mukundan have jointly won the award for the second category that is, Indian language Fiction Translation (translation into English by an Indian). The duo won the award for the work titled On the Banks of the Mayyazhi.

The winners of each category is entitled to Rs three lakh each. The two categories had a separate panel of judges. While Professor Malashri Lal, professor of English from Delhi University, writer Vikram Chandra and Alok Rai, professor of Humanities, IIT Delhi, worked for the first category, Sujeet Mukherjee, former director of Orient Longman, Dr Harish Trivedi, head of the department of English,Delhi University and Tamil litterateur, Dilip Kumar, were judges for the second category.