New Delhi: Award-winning author Meghna Pant's debut collection of short stories Happy Birthday (Random House India, 2013) has been longlisted for the prestigious Frank O'Connor Award 2014, which is the biggest and richest short story award in the world.
This major international prize award is presented each year to an original collection of stories, rewarding commitment to the form and promoting the publication of short story collections, in memory of short story writer, novelist, poet and critic Frank O’Connor. Past recipients of the Frank O’Connor Award include Jhumpa Lahiri, Yiyun Li, Miranda July and Haruki Murakami.
According to The Sunday Guardian: "Happy Birthday is in the front row of Indian short fiction; a gem from the subcontinent." Booker-shortlisted author Jeet Thayil has defined Pant’s writing as ‘deft, merciless, expertly-tuned’, bestselling author Ashwin Sanghi as 'provocative and inspirational', and award-winning author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni as ‘surprising and moving’.
One And A Half Wife – Pant’s debut novel – won the national Muse India Young Writer Award and was shortlisted for other awards, including the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Her short stories have been published in over a dozen global literary magazines, including Avatar Review, Wasafari, Eclectica and QLRS.
Pant is also known for having abridged the world’s longest epic, The Mahabharata, into one hundred tweets that The Guardian reviewed as “wonderfully descriptive and paced."
Pant is currently working on her third book Son of Gods based in – and between –India and China. It is a dark comedy that portrays a family’s greed, lust and power, in the wake of geopolitical tension.
