In an interview to JCB Prize, Jawed said that he was always interested to communicate and express himself, even as a child. The other books in the shortlist were Manorajan Byapari’s Imaan (Eka), translated by Arunava Sinha from the Bengali Chhera Chhera Jeebon Sheela Tomy’s Valli (Harper Perennial), translated by Jayasree Kalathil Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi), translated by Daisy Rockwell and Song of the Soil(Rachna Books), by Chuden Kabimo, translated from the Nepali by Ajit Baral. In its fifth edition, the JCB Prize shortlist had five books, all translations. Pointing out that Urdu has become a little bit of a stranger in India today, she said it needed people to spread the word because this “stranger has many things to say.” In a review in The Hindu, Shafey Kidwai had written that the novel uses food as a central trope to blur the lines between reality, fantasy and memory. It also praised the translation which highlights the poetry and music of the original text.īaran Farooqi thanked her father, the Urdu litterateur Shamshur Rahman Faruqi, who introduced her to Urdu, and had first brought Jawed’s writing to her notice. Panneerselvan, said it is a brutal and mesmerising account of the contemporary body, home and nation told through food and the kitchen.

“I didn’t expect this at all, I wrote this novel in Urdu in 2014,” he said, thanking his translator for transforming his novel into another language so beautifully.

“We look for happiness in every corner, and today I feel I have found happiness by winning this Prize,” he said, accepting it in New Delhi. He is an outsider both at home and in the world. Translated by Baran Farooqi, it tells the story of an orphaned boy, Zahiruddin Babar, who is brought up in a joint family, and looks at life from different angles. Jawed explores the travails of existence and squalor through the metaphor of food.

The Paradise of Food (Juggernaut) by Khalid Jawed, translated from the Urdu Nemat Khana, has won the ₹25 lakh prize 2022 JCB Prize for Literature.

The Paradise of Food by Khalid Jawed