The $50,000 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, also known as ‘the American Nobel,’ is awarded in alternate years to any living author writing from anywhere in the world
Ananda Devi, the Mauritian writer of Telugu and Creole descent, has become the 28th laureate of the renowned Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which was announced by World Literature Today, the University of Oklahoma’s award-winning magazine of international literature and culture, on Tuesday (October 24). Also known as the “American Nobel,” the $50,000 prize, which is awarded in alternating years, along with the NSK Neustadt Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature, recognizes outstanding literary merit in literature from across the world.
Born in Mauritius to Indo-Mauritians (Balgopal and Saraswaty) with Telugu ancestry, Ananda Devi (66) — who is married to the film director Harrikrisna Anenden, known for La cathédrale (2006), an adaption of Devi’s book, and The Children of Troumaron (2012) — has become a major literary figure in the Francophone world; her vast body of work includes over 25 books, including novels, collections of poetry, short stories, and essays, written over the last five decades. One of her poetry collections, When The Night Agrees To Speak To Me, translated by Kazim Ali, was published by HarperCollins India in 2021.
“If I had only one word to define this book, it would be aliveness — a synonym, plausibly, in Ananda Devi’s idiolect, for freedom. Everything — from the Night in the title, to skin, to mud, to a green sari, to sound, to Time itself — is alive… this is a collection that held my body — eyes and heart and brain — in its jaws from beginning till end,” wrote poet Karthika Naïr in her blurb to the book.
A gifted writer
Ananda Devi’s work has been translated into over a dozen languages and has received several literary prizes from Mauritius as well as from France. She was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government in 2010 and received a major award from the Académie Française in 2014. The University of Silesia, Poland, conferred upon her a doctorate honoris causa. The Guardian recommended her novel Eve Out of Her Ruins (2016) — the tale of four young Mauritians trapped in their country’s endless cycle of fear and violence, it has been translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman and was published in India by Speaking Tiger Books in 2017 — among the hundred best contemporary novels in translation by women writers.
The four Mauritians in the novel include Eve, who uses her body as a weapon. Her loyal friend, Savita, dreams of leaving but won’t go alone. There’s also Saadiq, a talented poet inspired by Rimbaud, who is in love with Eve, and Clélio, a rebellious soul patiently waiting for his brother’s summons from France. The novel is a “heartbreaking look at the dark corners of the island nation of Mauritius that tourists never see, and a poignant exploration of the construction of personhood at the margins of society.” The book also features an original introduction by Nobel Prize winner J.M.G. Le Clézio, who declares Devi “a truly great writer.”
Showcasing the splendour, and darkness of Mauritius
Devi was nominated for the Neustadt Prize by award-winning French journalist-writer-filmmaker Fabienne Kanor, of Martinique origin, who has published seven novels centred on race and gender in France and in the French West Indies and West African migrations in France. Robert Con Davis-Undiano, World Literature Today’s executive director, said: “It is long overdue for Ananda Devi to receive an international honour of this magnitude. She is deserving, and I hope that this honour will be a springboard to more recognition for her amazing work.”
Along with Devi, Sholeh Wolpé and Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, the jury, chose two other authors: Iranian-born writer and translator Shahrnush Parsipur (77) and Chinese-American Maxine Hong Kingston (82), who has written three novels and several works of non-fiction about the experiences of Chinese Americans. While the Prize — the first international literary award of this scope to originate in the US — is open to any living author (poets, novelists and playwrights) writing from anywhere in the world, the jury comprises acclaimed international authors. The prize money comes from a generous endowment from the Neustadt family of Dallas, Denver and Boston.
Today, her substantial oeuvre includes about a dozen novels, steeped in the diversity and diversity and splendour of Mauritius, the small island nation, spread over an area of 2,040 square kilometre. 0 “Her novels present the dark reality of the postcolonial island whose infrastructure is on the verge of collapse and reveal the insularity and claustrophobia that mark not only the city of Port-Louis, but the entire island. She presents an inhuman space limited not only by its geography, but also by the poverty, suffering, and misery that grip her characters so unrelentingly,” writes Rita Tyagi in her introduction to Ananda Devi: Feminism, Narration and Polyphony: 32 (Chiasma), the first full-length devoted to the writer, which was published in 2013.
