Indian Novelist Vikram Chandra named among the finalists of NBCC awards

Novelist Vikram Chandra on 20 January 2015 was named among the finalists for prestigious National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Awards. He was nominated for the American literary awards for his work about culture of computer programming and classical Indian aesthetics.

Delhi-born Vikram Chandra of 53 is a finalist in the criticism category for his non-fiction work Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty.

Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty has been published thrice but with different titles, namely
• In 2013 as Mirrored Mind: My Life in Letters and Code
• In 2014 as Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software
• In the US as Geek Sublime: The Code of Beauty, the Beauty of Code

Some other acclaimed works of Chandra who at present teaches creative writing at the University of California, include
• Red Earth and Pouring Rain published in 1995. The book won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book and the David Higham Prize for Fiction
• Sacred Games published in 2006. The book won the Hutch Crossword Award for English Fiction for 2006 and a Salon Book Award 2007

He is also the co-writer of Bollywood film Mission Kashmir that starred Sanjay Dutt, Hrithik Roshan, Preity Zinta, and Jackie Shroff.

Besides, the NBCC also announced its 30 finalists in six categories, namely autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, general nonfiction, and poetry-for the best books of 2014. The awards will be presented on 12 March 2015. Some other nominated novelists are
• For being a powerful catalyst in reshaping literary culture over the past half century, American novelist Toni Morrison, 83 will receive the 'Ivan Sandrof' Lifetime Achievement Award
• To recognise outstanding first books in any genre, American writer Phil Klay's short story collection Redeployment will receive the John Leonard Prize, which was established in 2014