BENGALURU: The best fiction award in English was bagged by Aatish Taseer for his book ‘The Way Things Are’. The awards, which are part of Bangalore Literature Festival (BLF), are being given away for the first time this year. In the best English nonfiction category, Akshaya Mukul’s ‘Gita Press and the Making of Hindu India’ secured the top honours. The Kannada Literary Achievement Award was won by Prathiba Nandakumar. The awards carried a total purse of `2 lakh. Taseer’s ‘The Way Things Are’ was selected from five shortlisted books, which included Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Flood of Fire’ and Anuradha Roy’s ‘Sleeping on Jupiter’. In the non-fiction category, the books shortlisted included ‘Editor Unplugged’ by Vinod Mehta, ‘My Name is Abu Salem’ by S Hussain Zaidi and ‘The Emergency: A Personal History’ by Coomi Kapoor.
Sessions
Most of the sessions on the first day of the Festival received good response. * Apart from events for literature buffs, film screening and Lit For Kids was also held at the venue. *The first day of the event concluded with ‘The Atta Galatta’- a book award ceremony and a Carnatic classical concert. * Readers were also seen getting copies of books signed by authors. * The audience was involved in the discussions held at two venues. * A good number of questions on either advice or views of the writers on a range of issues were thrown around after the sessions.