London-based Indian-origin author Chetna Maroo’s debut novel Western Lane is among 13 books that have been listed for the 2023 Booker Prize. Born in Kenya and currently living in London, Chetna Maroo has written various stories for the anthologies published by the Paris Review, the Stinging Fly, and the Dublin Review.
Chetna Maroo had worked as an accountant before embarking on her writing career. Her literary accomplishments further include being honoured with the 2022 Plimpton Prize for Fiction. Plimpton Prize is a prestigious recognition bestowed by the Paris Review to acknowledge exceptional works of fiction published in the magazine during the preceding year.
About the Novel
Maroo set her debut novel within the context of the British Gujarati milieu and used the game of squash as a metaphor to portray the complex emotions undergone by an 11-year-old girl, Gopi, and her bonding with her family, grappling with the grief of her just-deceased mother. The novel begins a few days after the funeral of Gopi’s mother. In an attempt to find an outlet for her grief, Gopi, who is now left in the care of her father along with her two elder sisters, starts practising squash at the Western Lane, a sports centre. The arc of the story unfolds like that of a Hollywood movie: tragedy, sporting trial, and then potential triumph. The book concludes with Gopi playing the final of the Durham and Cleveland squash tournament. The author has conveyed the turmoil and various emotions of a young mind in crystalline language, which reverberates like the sound of a ball hit clean and hard … “with a close echo”.
Western Lane is one of the four debut novels that has made up for 2023 the ‘Booker Dozen’ or 13 longlisted books, alongside If I Survive You by Jonathan Escoffery, Pearl by Sian Hughes, and All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow.
The Prize
The 2023 Booker Prize winner would be announced at an award ceremony which is set to take place on November 26, 2023 at a London event hosted in Old Billingsgate. The winner would receive £50,000 and a trophy named ‘Iris’ in the honour of the 1978 Booker Prize-winning Irish-British author, Iris Murdoch.
The Booker Prize is an annual literary award given to the best English-language novel published in the UK and Ireland since 1969. The winning book is chosen by a five-person panel consisting of authors, literary agents, librarians, publishers, and booksellers.
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