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It's Sharma versus Mishra

A P Kamath

New York-based Akhil Sharma (An Obedient Father) and New Delhi-based Pankaj Mishra (The Romantics) are among the five finalists for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction given annually by the Los Angeles Times.

The two Indian authors, both in their thirties, are competing with three others, including 24-year-old London-based Zadie Smith, whose White Teeth, a comical look at sex, race and politics in multicultural London, has brought her immense praise on both sides of the Atlantic. "The best talent of 2000," declared The Observer magazine last year.

Now in their 21st year, the prizes acknowledge excellence in nine categories of writing, ranging from fiction and young adult fiction to science and technology. This year, for the first time, the prizes include one in a mystery-thriller category. Competing with Mishra, Sharma and Smith are Matthew Klam (Sam the Cat and Other Stories) and Helen DeWitt (The Last Samurai).

The Romantics, a novel about East-West collision was hailed by The New York Times as a "reflective" work that was "an antidote to the rigorous magic realism so common in current Indian writing." It is now available in paperback.

Sharma's political farce, An Obedient Father, was hailed by Time magazine as a book that would "also appeal to anyone with a taste for red-blood American realism and farce."

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