Mukherjee’s second novel the Lives of Others Wins Top Prize

Highly talented British based Indian writer Neel Mukherjee has won this year’s prestigious Encore Award for his second novel ‘The Lives of Others’.The Encore Award Literary Prize is somewhat distinct as it celebrates the achievement of outstanding ‘second’ novels. The award fills a niche by celebrating the achievement of outstanding second novels, often neglected in comparison to the attention given to promising first books.Collecting the £10,000 prize money Mukherjee called the Encore Awards ‘’a burst of light in what is usually considered to be dark, damp, bleak territory – the dreaded second novel’’, quoted The Guardian.

Alex Clark, chair of the Encore judges said: “We were immensely impressed by the ambition and depth of Neel Mukherjee’s second novel, in which a suburban house in 1960s Calcutta comes to reflect the political and social convulsions of an entire society”.

Mukherjee’s book tells the story about a young man who is drawn into in to extreme political activism in 1960s Calcutta. Mukherjee chronicles these extraordinary era in Indian history through the young man’s family. Through him the book highlights the wider context of the mass hunger of Second World War, the independence struggle and the emergence of the Maoist movement.
The book which was also shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, lost out to Richard Flanagan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Mukherjee’s first novel, A Life Apart won the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain award for best fiction in 2008.In between writing novels, Mukherjee reviews fiction for The Times, Time Asia, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer, New York Times, Boston Review and The Sunday Telegraphs