Winners

Special mentions

(Each translator wins a special mention prize of INR 5,000)

11/12/2024, Wednesday

Announcing the longlist for the Mozhi Prize 2024!

We are delighted to announce the longlist for the Mozhi Prize 2024. We received 120 unique entries. This year we received submissions from many languages of India — Kannada came out on top, with 29 entries.

Going by our usual process, we gave equal weightage to the quality of the translation—particularly looking for translations with creative, inventive solutions to problems posed by the source text—as well as the aesthetic quality of the story selected for translation in coming up with the longlist. In general, we believe we have identified translations that we thought were sensitive to the verbal and emotional nuances of the original story and attempted to render the artistry of the original in English. 

At the end of the reading period, we are very happy to share that we have a longlist of 19 amazing stories from across languages, geographies, and time periods. Congratulations to the longlisted translators! Stay tuned for the shortlist announcement later this month. 

The Mozhi Prize 2024 – Longlist

Anjum Hasan

Reading the best stories submitted for the Mozhi Prize, range and diversity, those two cliches we habitually associate with Indian literature, come to mind and must be dismissed. Instead, a couple of other aspects stood out for me in this list. One is small-time lives. Most characters here are, poignantly, trying to get by, make do, protect their scraps of dignity, from time to time breaking out in minor but arresting meditations. Also running through many stories is the full, oppressive weight of patriarchy but in those written closer to our time we begin to hear men reflect on masculine desire and violence. Finally, the malleability of English impresses, how in the most skilled hands – admittedly rare but in evidence in this list – it can become a colloquial Indian tongue.

Anita Agnihotri

Being a member of the jury in the Mozhi Prize has been a very enriching experience for me as a writer as well as a reader of literature. In its fourth episode, the competition has become very significant with over one hundred entries being received. As a jury member I read nineteen stories in the longlist after the Mozhi team did a great background work of preparing the longlist . The stories I read belong to different languages, times and socio political contexts. For me it was like a travel through time and country, vivid in cultural and social landscapes, with myriad hues of human emotions. The dimensions of gender, caste and class made the reading experience all the more relevant and reconfirmed my trust in the strength and depth of Indian literature. Many of the shortlisted stories stories  like Kallo, Angurlata, Gadal, Temple Chariot have powerful women protagonists and reflect deep understanding of realities of caste, class and the all encompassing patriarchy in India. The Mozhi Prize continues to make a very substantial contribution to Indian literature in translation.  

Jerry Pinto

It was deeply gratifying to be judging the Mozhi Prize. It meant spending time with the short story, which as a form is a formidable challenge for writers. To find oneself in the midst of intense discussions about what constitutes a good story and a good translation was very satisfying.

We are delighted to announce the shortlist of the Mozhi Prize 2024. Congratulations to all the shortlisted translators!

The winners of the Prize will be announced by the end of the month. Please follow our page and our Twitter (X)/Instagram handle @mozhispaces for updates. Thank you!

The Mozhi Prize 2024 – Shortlist

Hello, and wish you a happy new year!

After an intense reading period and some spirited discussions among the judges, we are delighted to announce the results of the Mozhi Prize 2024. 

This time we built on the format that we had settled on last year. The competition was open to translators across the country working to translate short fiction from any Indian language into English. While most of the rules remained unchanged, we expanded our definition of an ‘emerging translator’ to include those who may have published up to one book length work in English. 

We received a total of 120 entries. Though this was nearly 40% lower than the number of submissions last year, we were encouraged by the marked improvement in the quality of translations. We received entries from 15 source languages, including less visible languages such as Odia, Manipuri, and Nepali. While Hindi has been the most represented language across editions of the Mozhi Prize, we were happy to see Kannada topping the list this time with 29 entries . Bangla, Tamil, and Malayalam were relatively well represented with more than 10 entries each. Submissions from Marathi, Telugu, and Assamese also increased from last year. Additionally, the number of young translators grew, with 58% of the submissions coming from those under 40 years of age.

Some trends remained unchanged, though. Same as last year, ~61% of our applicants identified as women, 38% as men and 1% as non-binary. Despite ongoing challenges in obtaining translation rights, we were pleased to see that approximately 70% of the stories submitted were written within the past 25 years. The enduring appeal of good fiction was underscored by early stories such as The Beggar Sahib (1899) and Aangurlata (1957) making it to the longlist. Equally, we were impressed by the subtle and artful hand with which recent stories such as Kallo (2022), and Lord Cornwallis and Queen Victoria (2022) dealt with the modern preoccupation of identity and forbidden love. 

The two of us, and our intern, Aaranya Swaminathan, read all 120 entries. As announced, we took into account both the quality of the original story and the translation in arriving at a longlist. At Mozhi, we accord equal importance to both aspects with a view to celebrating the role of the translator as a curator and not merely a purveyor of words. It was reassuring to see translators choose stories with emotional depth, fine characters, and detailed world-building such as The Brew (Bonti Senchowa) and Gadal (Rangeya Raghav), particularly from writers who are relatively undiscovered in English. We hope to see more such distinctive stories in future editions. 

Using this approach, we arrived at a longlist of 19 entries. Our panel of judges, Anjum Hasan, Anita Agnihotri and Jerry Pinto each read all 19 entries, scoring them independently on the same two dimensions mentioned above. This was followed by a series of engaging discussions on the merits of each entry. You can read more about their experience in the citation page. We are grateful to the judges for their generous investment of time and effort in the Mozhi Prize.

And finally, our congratulations to all the winners and special mentions!! We will soon publish the winning entries, stay tuned to read the stories and learn more about the authors.

Best,

Suchitra & Priyamvada

Team Mozhi

All prizes are sponsored by The Mozhi Trust.