Oxford Bookstore has recently announced the 9th Book Cover Prize Longlist in New Delhi. The jury list is chaired by museum curator Alka Pande, along with author and Member of Parliament, Shashi Tharoor.
Shashi Tharoor with Alka Pande
Guest jurors for the selection of book covers include the director of Institut Français in India and Counsellor for Cooperation and Cultural Action, French Embassy in India, Emmanuel Lebrun-Damiens, and director, Information Services South Asia Goethe-Institut and Max Mueller Bhavan, Anja Riedeberger. They were in the august company of Priti Paul, Alka Pande, Shobhaa De and Kunal Basu to select 23 longlisted book covers out of 350 entries.
(L to R) Anja Riedeberger, Shashi Tharoor, Alka Pande and Emmanuel Lebrun-Damiens
The longlist showcases book covers by well-known designers like Siddharth Dasgupta for his own book – All These Streets We’ve Known By Heart (Red River), Trinankur Banerjee for Paulina Chiziane’s Amar Babar Bagan (Jadavpur University Press), Saurav Das for Laura T. Murphy’s Azad Nagar (HarperCollins India), Priya Kuriyan for Shobha Tharoor Srinivasan’s It’s Time to Rhyme - Poems for Kids of all Ages (Aleph Book Company). The list also includes book covers by Saurabh Garge for Devdutt Pattanaik’s The Adornment of Gods (Westland Books), Devangana Dash for Amitav Ghosh’s The Living Mountain (Harper Fourth Estate/ An Imprint of HarperCollins) and Ahlawat Gunjan for Salman Rushdie’s Victory City (Hamish Hamilton/ An Imprint of Penguin Random House), among others.
Dancer Arupa Lahiry performing at the event
The announcement event of the longlist also had a performance by Sangeet Natak Akademi awardee Bharatnatyam dancer Arupa Lahiry, who performed a piece titled Of Stories and Narratives.
The Oxford Bookstore shortlist for book cover prize will be announced at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival (AKLF) in February, the winner will be declared at a later date in New Delhi. AKLF is scheduled to take place between February 9 and 11.
