DHAKA: A novel about an eight-year-old Indian boy who moves to the US with his family in the late 1970s has won the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award.

Akhil Sharma’s ‘Family Life’ mirrors the author’s own experience of emigrating from India to America as a child, reports the BBC.

Accepting the 100,000 euro prize, he said he felt ‘abashed’.

Previously known as the Impac Award, the winner is chosen from a shortlist of 10, compiled from nominations made by public libraries in 118 cities.

Sharma, an assistant professor of English at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, has previously won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction and the New York Times’ Notable Book of the Year.

‘To be acknowledged by people I respect is a strange thing. I can’t say I fooled them. I feel abashed by this honor,’ he said. Sharma is the third American author to win the prize in its 21-year history.

Family Life was chosen ahead of books by Man Booker prize winner Marlon James, Pulitzer Prize winner Marilynne Robinson and debut novelists Mary Costello and Scholastique Mukasonga.

The prize’s longlist of 160 books included works by JK Rowling’s pseudonym Robert Galbraith, journalist Caitlin Moran, Ian McEwan and past Impac winners Colm Toibin and Per Petterson.

BDST: 1516 HRS, JUN 11, 2016
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