Winner of the 2012 Neustadt International Prize for Literature
“Mistry writes with great passion, and his body of work shows the most compassionate and astute observations of the human condition, making him one of the most exciting and important contemporary novelists writing in the English language.”—Samrat Upadhyay in his statement nominating Rohinton Mistry for the Neustadt International Prize for Literature.
Born in Bombay, Rohinton Mistry (b. 1952) has lived in Canada since 1975. He is the author of three novels, all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and a collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag. His first novel, Such a Long Journey, won the Governor General’s Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, and the SmithBooks / Books in Canada First Novel Award. It was made into an acclaimed feature film in 1998. A Fine Balance was winner of the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Winifred Holtby Award, and Denmark’s ALOA Prize. It was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and the Prix Femina. In 2002 A Fine Balance was selected for Oprah’s Book Club. Family Matters won the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for Fiction and the Canadian Authors Association Fiction Award. It was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Mistry was awarded the Trudeau Fellows Prize in 2004 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009, he was a finalist for the 2011 Man Booker International Prize. At the 2014 Times of India Mumbai Literature Festival, he was presented with its Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2016 he was appointed to the Order of Canada. His work has been published in more than thirty-five languages.
| 2012 Jurors and Finalists | |
|---|---|
| JURORS | FINALISTS |
| Rabih Alameddine (Lebanon/US) | Aleksandar Hemon (Bosnia/US) |
| Gabeba Baderoon (South Africa/US) | Zoë Wicomb (South Africa) |
| Norma Cantú (Mexico/US) | Elena Poniatowska (Mexico) |
| Andrea De Carlo (Italy) | Bob Dylan (US) |
| Nathalie Handal (France/US) | Diamela Eltit (Chile) |
| Ilya Kaminsky (Ukraine/US) | Vénus Khoury-Ghata (Lebanon) |
| Yahia Lababidi (Egypt/Lebanon) | John Banville (Ireland) |
| Miguel Syjuco (Philippines) | Tahar Ben Jelloun (Morocco) |
| Samrat Upadhyay (Nepal/US) | Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada) |
“One could not go home again—that much I knew. But all those memories of youth and childhood, running endlessly through my mind, now taught me the corollary, that one could never leave home either.”
—Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada), 2012 Neustadt Laureate
