New Delhi (01.03.2023): A Hindi novelist, short story writer and poet Vinod Kumar Shukla will be given the prestigious PEN/Nabokov Award for 2023 for Achievement in International Literature on March 2 in New York in an award ceremony. Naukar Ki Kameez (1979) and poetry collections Sab Kuch Hona Bacha Rahega (1992) are a couple of timeless literary marvels of the 87-year-old litterateur.

“Shukla’s prose and poetry are marked by acute, often defamiliarising, observation. The voice that emerges is that of a deeply intelligent onlooker; a daydreamer struck occasionally by wonder. Writing for decades without the recognition he deserves; Shukla has created literature that changes how we understand the modern,” the judges – Amit Chaudhuri, Roya Hakakian and Maaza Mengiste – said about his work.

He has won Sahitya Akademi Award and Atta Galatta–Bangalore Literature Festival Book Prize besides many others. His work is lauded for its distinctive linguistic texture and emotional depth as his literary style breaks with convention, earning comparisons to magical realism that only partly capture his striking originality. Renowned for bringing the marvelous to the ordinary, in his intimate evocations of rural and small-town life and his interrogation of modern aspirations, Shukla offers readers something universal.