Kritika Pandey from India is the regional winner for Asia of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The 29-year old author from Ranchi, J...
Kritika Pandey from India is the regional winner for Asia of the 2020 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. The 29-year old author from Ranchi, Jharkhand, beat out fellow Indian Dinesh Devarajan, Nafisa A Iqbal from Bangladesh, Sharmini Aphrodite from Malaysia), and Maham Javaid from Pakistan) to become the Asia winner.
Willam Phuan, Executive Director of the Singapore Books Council and Asia judge, said, “The power of ‘The Great Indian Tee and Snakes’ lies in its bracingly lucid yet restrained prose, which captures the topical urgency of religious discrimination and tension in India.”
Pandey now goes into the final round for the overall winner of this year’s competition, where here contenders are the regional winners for Africa, Canada and Europe, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The winner will be announced on June 30, and will receive £5000, while each of the regional winners receive £2500.
Pandey spoke to Scroll.in about her story, her writing and her inspirations. Excerpts from the interview.
Tell us about the origins of your story, “The Great Indian Tee and Snakes”. Particularly how a real-life incident turns into fiction for you. And about what fiction hopes to accomplish with such a project.
I once saw a map that had been documenting cases of mob lynching in India since...
