Pakistani writer Jamil Ahmad, the author of the Wandering Falcon is the second Pakistani novelist win the Shakti Bhatt Book Prize in India. – File Photo

Jamil Ahmad, the author of The Wandering Falcon, has won the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize in India. The second novelist from Pakistan to win the award (the first was Mohammed Hanif for A Case of Exploding Mangoes), Jamil is also “probably among the oldest writers ever to win a First Book prize,” Jai Arjun Singh, writer and blogger and a member of the jury, said.

The prize is set up in memory of writer and editor Shakti Bhatt. This year, as is the practice, a shortlist of six books were announced. They were: The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed, The Truth About Me by A. Revathi, Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka, A Free Man by Aman Sethi and R.D. Burman: The Man, The Music by Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal

The winner was chosen by a jury comprising graphic novelist and illustrator Sarnath Bannerjee, writer and blogger Jai Arjun Singh, and novelist Palash Krishna Mehrotra.

Singh on his blog wrote that “it felt like a pity that such a range of books had to be pitted against each other — but such are the inevitable hazards of any award process and one must accept them.”