Manu Joseph and Anjali Joseph on the Shortlist for The Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2011

Manu Joseph's debut novel Serious Men, which won the 2010 Hindu Best Fiction Award, has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Another writer from India, Anjali Joseph, is on the shortlist for her novel, Saraswati Park. The rest of the finalists are writers from the United Kingdom.

The shortlists for South East Asia and Pacific can be found here.

The shortlisted writers for South Asia and Europe Best Book are:

Lyrics Alley by Leila Abouleila (UK), The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore (UK), The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (UK), The Long Song by Andrea Levy (UK), Sex and Stravinsky by Barbara Trapido (UK), and Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett (UK).

The shortlisted writers for South Asia and Europe Best First Book are:

Serious Men by Manu Joseph (India), Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph (India), The House with the Blue Shutters by Lisa Hilton (UK), Children of the Sun by Max Shaefer (UK), Grace Williams says it Loud by Emma Henderson (UK), and Sabra Zoo by Mischa Hiller (UK).

The regional winners will be announced on March 3, 2011.

More information at the Commonwealth Foundation website.