Veteran Indian novelist and feminist author, Shashi Deshpande was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award this year for her timeless contribution to Indian writing in English. Some of Shashi Deshpande’s notable books are: ‘That long silence’, ‘Roots and Shadows’, ‘A Matter of Time’, among others.
On winning the award, Shashi Deshpande said, “A lifetime acheivement award is very precious because it is your whole life’s work which is being celebrated here. The letter that informed me of the award wrote of the odds and inhibitions that women writer have to endure… I was also most often asked the question by journalists and academics, ‘Why do you write about women?’. Novel after novel I hoped I would be considred as a serious writer, not as a women writer writing about women, but it never seem to happen. But today when I look at the winners of this evening, and the three writers who received this award before me– Nayantara Sahgal, Romila Thapar, and Anita Desai– women of courage and women I admire. When I think of Annie Ernaux, the Nobel Prize for Literature 2022 winner, she wrote only about women’s experiences, and Geetanjali Shree– who wrote about women’s lives and won the International Booker Prize 2022, I dare to hope that such questions would never be asked of any writer who happens to be a woman.”
