For decades, the admirers of the Bengali novelist Mahasweta Devi have been saying that she should be a major contender for the Nobel Prize.
But since her books are not widely translated she remains relatively unknown, said fellow novelist Amitava Ghosh.
Now, Mahasweta is getting some recognition abroad. She is in the long list of the Man Booker International Prize. The list, to be announced in New York on Wednesday, includes Nobel laureate V S Naipaul, former Booker Prize winner Peter Carey and the distinguished American writer E L Doctrow.
The list also finds a place for the internationally acclaimed novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. The award is given to any writer whose work is available in English and recognises a body of her work.
Mahasweta Devi, whose books include Aranyer Adhikar and Hajar Chausher Ma (made into a Hindi film), is 83 years old.
The inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005 was awarded to the Albanian novelist Ismail Kadare, who edged away established writers, such as the Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Philip Roth, John Updike and Milan Kundera.
The prize given in two years carries prize money of 60,000 pounds (about Rs 44 lakhs) and can be won by any author worldwide -- provided their work is available in English.
Devi is known for depicting the moral dilemmas Indians from different walks of life face.
"I have always believed that the real history is made by ordinary people. I constantly come across the reappearance, in various forms, of folklore, ballads, myths and legends, carried by ordinary people across generations," Devi has said.
"The reason and inspiration for my writing are those people who are exploited and used, and yet they do not accept defeat. For me, the endless source of ingredients for writing is in these amazingly, noble, suffering human beings. Why should I look for my raw material elsewhere, once I have started knowing them? Sometimes it seems to me that my writing is really their doing," Devi added.
This year's 14 contenders -- seven of whom are writers in translation -- come from 12 countries and include the Canadian short story writer Alice Munro and American author and Princeton University professor Joyce Carol Oates.
Pulitzer prize-winning novelist and best-selling author Jane Smiley (The Age of Grief, Moo) is in the chair of judges for the Booker awards, that includes novelist, critic and musician Amit Chaudhuri and the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov.
"Choosing for this year's prize has made me and the other judges aware of how unusual and astonishing the literary world really is," Smiley said.
"We've all read books by authors we had never heard of before, and they have turned out to be some of the best books we've ever read," she said.
"I have come across some of the best writers in the world who have come together on this judges' list regardless of celebrity or commercial success. For us it's been a rare combination of education and delight," Smiley added.
