Journalist and author Raghu Karnad wins Rs 1,15,00,000 Windham-Campbell Prize
New Delhi: Karnad won the prize in the non-fiction category for his book, ‘Farthest Field’, about India’s role in World War II.
Delhi-based journalist and author Raghu Karnad was announced as one of eight recipients of Yale University’s Windham-Campbell Prize this year, in London. One of the world’s most lucrative literary awards, the prize is open to English language writers from across the world, with each winner receiving $165,000 to support their writing.
Karnad was named as a winner in the non-fiction category of the prize for his debut book, Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War, published in 2015. Panning across Singapore, Eritrea, Libya, El Alamein, Basra, Arakan and Imphal, Farthest Field tells the story of three men from the same family serving in the Indian Army during World War II. Calling it an “epic of un-forgetting”, the prize lauded Karnad’s writing for combining forensic archival research with “imaginative fire and unsettling national and colonial histories”.
Established in 2013 after writer Donald Windham left his estate to Yale University, the Windham-Campbell Prize does not have a submission process and is judged anonymously, with winners only finding out through a phone call from director of the prize. The literary award aims to “call attention to literary achievements” and allow writers to “focus on their work independent of financial concerns”.
American writer Rebecca Solnit was named as the other winner in this year’s non-fiction category. The winners for fiction are Irish short story write Danielle McLaughlin and Canadian novelist David Chariandy. Ghanian poet Kwame Dawes and Ishion Hutchinson from Jamaica won for poetry and Australian playwright Patricia Cornelius and Korean-American director and playwright Young Jean Lee won in the Drama category.
Past winners of the prize include Jerry Pinto, Maya Jasanoff, Teju Cole and Geoff Dyer.\
Courtesy: scroll.in
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Two injuries, one DNF, a DQ as India end messy World Relays campaign
Gaborone (Botswana) (PTI): Amoj Jacob and Ragul Kumar got injured during the men's 4x400m and 4x100 races respectively as India ended their World Athletics Relays campaign in disappointment on the second day of competitions here on Sunday.
The Indian camp had high hopes of making the 2027 World Championships in the men's 4x400m relay but the team did not finish (DNF) the race as Jacob suffered cramps and pulled out of the race after taking the baton from the first leg runner Dharamveer Choudhary. Rajesh Ramesh and Vishal TK were to run in the third and fourth legs.
Those teams which could not qualify for the 2027 Beijing World Championships by reaching the final round of each of the six relay events on Saturday were given another chance in the second qualification round on Sunday.
The top two teams in each of the two heats (in all six relay events) booked the Beijing ticket on Sunday.
India will now have to try and qualify for the World Championships through the Top Lists of the World Athletics, which is a long and tedious process.
In the men's 4x100m race, third leg runner Ragul Kumar fell down the track after failing to hand over the baton inside the exchange zone to fourth leg runner Gurindervir Singh, which clearly showed the lack of coordination among the runners.
Harsh Santosh Raut and Animesh Kujur ran the first two legs.
The Indian quartet was disqualified and Kumar was seen being taken away from the Field of Play with the help of the volunteers.
It was a comedy of errors in the case of the women's 4x100m race, which saw the baton being dropped during an exchange between first leg runner Tamanna and second runner Nithya Gandhe, though the Indians finished the race in 53.09 seconds.
Gandhe started running quite a distance, but after realising that the baton was not in her hand, she turned and ran back to pick it up.
The only silver-lining for the Indian contingent was the national record time in the mixed 4x100m relay race, though the quartet of Ragul Kumar, Nithya Gandhe, Animesh Kujur and Sneha SS finished sixth in heat number two with a time of 41.35 seconds, bettering the previous national mark of 42.30 seconds set in March in Chandigarh.
The mixed 4x400m relay quartet of Theerthesh P Shetty, Kumari Saloni, Nihal William and Rashdeep Kaur ended at fifth in heat number one with a time of 3 minutes and 19.40 seconds.
On Saturday, all the five Indian relay teams had failed to make it to the respective final rounds and thus missed out on the 2027 World Championships berths.
