Prize-winning writers on Commonwealth Games menu

Literary enthusiasts may get a chance to interact with award-winning authors at a special event during the Commonwealth Games that will host all the previous winners of the annual Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. “We hope to hold a literary event in the cultural programmes associated with the Games and will invite authors who have won Commonwealth Prize,” Commonwealth Foundation director Mike Collins said.

The previous winners of the award include Vikram Chandra, Jhumpa Lahiri, Mohammed Hanif, V S Naipaul, J M Coetzee, Indra Sinha, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood. “India is at the heart of the Commonwealth and it is great to have the Games and the literary award come here,” Collins said.

Established in 1987, the award covers Commonwealth regions of Africa, the Caribbean and Canada, Europe and South Asia and Southeast Asia and Pacific. It aims to reward the best fiction written in English. “We are constantly looking at local publishers. For the first time we have a winner from Samoa, a lesser known African country,” Collins added.