The nominations for the Vodafone Crossword Book Award 2008 have been announced and the fiction shortlist is a star-studded affair with Salman Rushdie (The Enchantress of Florence), Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies), Jhumpa Lahiri (Unaccustomed Earth), Neel Mukherjee (Past Continuous), Preeta Samarasan (Evening Is The Whole Day), Anuradha Roy (An Atlas of Impossible Longing) and Manjula Padmanabhan (Escape). The announcement was made by writers Sankar and Namita Devidayal at the India Habitat Centre, along with Urvashi Butalia of Kali for Women and R Sriram of Crossword Bookstores. Sarnath Banerjee played the host for the evening that also saw nominations announced for the non-fiction and translation categories.

The shortlisted non-fiction works include Curfewed Night by Basharat Peer, Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country by Sudeep Chakravarti, Smoke and Mirrors by Pallavi Aiyar, The Last Jews of Kerala by Edna Fernandes and The Women of Mahabharata by Chaturvedi Badrinath. The shortlisted books in translation category include Dissonance and Other Stories by K.S. Subramanian, Manto: Selected Stories by Aatish Taseer, T’ta Professor by Ira Pande and The Wind from the Hills by Prema Jayakumar. The results will be announced on July 23 in Mumbai and each award carries a cash prize of Rs 3 lakh, a trophy and a citation.