Amitav Ghosh gets life-time achievement award at Mumbai LitFest

Eminent writer Amitav Ghosh was on Sunday bestowed with the life-time achievement award at Tata Literature Live, the Mumbai LitFest.

Ghosh, who has churned out a number of spell-bounding books, said, “It has been a long journey for me. It’s sort of strange to stand here and receive lifetime achievement award, because it feels I am just getting started and hope I have a few more books in me.”

“Thirty years ago when I started literature was the love that could not speak its name. In those days to say that you wanted to be a writer, would have invite ridicule. Because people like us were not meant to be a writer. We were expected to be bureaucrats, or bank managers,” said Ghosh who has penned “Sea of Poppies”.

“But over the years things have changed. Now there is a vast infrastructure, there is these huge and welcoming audiences. There is huge increase in public attention for the writers. So we (I) as an author should be thankful to all these people,” he added.

Meanwhile, Arvind Adiga’s ‘Selection Day’ won the book of year in fiction, whereas ‘The Gene’ penned by Siddhartha Mukherjee won an award in the non-fiction category.

‘Swimmer Among The Stars: Stories’ by Kanshik Tharoor and Manu Pillai’s ‘The Ivory Throne: Chronicles of the House of Travancore’, were best debut books in fiction and non-fiction categories respectively.

‘Grassroots Innovation: Minds on the Margins and not Marginalised’, by Anil Gupta was the business book of the year.

The LitFest introduced the big little award, a first-of-its-kind initiative to recognise the authors and illustrators of children books.

Madhuri Purandare was the best author, while Atanu Roy won the illustrator award in this category.