People of Indian origin continue to be represented in major literary nominations. The Man Booker longlist for 2015 has been announced and two Indians Anuradha Roy and Sunjeev Sahota have made it.

The annual prize promotes the very best in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. Arguably like the Oscars of the literature world, the top awards can transform the careers of writers into household names with international sales that leads to both critical and economic success.

Anuradha Roy is a journalist and publisher for an independent press group ‘Permanent Black’ in New Delhi. Her book Sleeping with Jupiter is longlisted. It is her third novel which tells a story about three elderly women sharing a carriage with a young bohemian. The women are pilgrims and the girl they connect with is a film researcher returning to investigate her own past. The story examines the everyday humanity of life in modern India with glimpses of the relationship between religion and sexual violence.

Roy has already won several awards for her previous work. She has won the Economist Crossword Prize for Fiction for her novel The Folded Earth, which was also nominated for several other prizes, including the Man Asian Literary Prize, the D.S.C. and the Hindu Literary Award.  Her first novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing (2008), has been widely translated and was named by World Literature Day as one of the sixty essential books on modern India.

British born Sunjeev Sahota from Derby moved to Chesterfield at aged seven. His paternal grandparents had originally come from Punjab. A graduate of mathematics from Imperial College London, Sahota only read his first novel at age 18 when he came across Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children whilst visiting India. Sahota’s first novel, Ours are the Streets, was published in January 2011 by Picador. He was included in the Granta list of 20 best young writers in 2013.

His latest work tells a story about thirteen young men live in a house in Sheffield, each in flight from India and in desperate search of a new life. Sweeping between India and England, and between childhood and the present day, The Year of the Runaways is a story of an unlikely family thrown together by circumstance.

There are 13 names on the long list which will be reduced even further on 15 September when the shortlist is announced. The winner will be announced on 13 October 2015. Nevertheless,  getting on the longlist is a tremendous achievement.

The Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2015 is chaired by Michael Wood. The judges are Ellah Allfrey, John Burnside, Sam Leith and Frances Osborne.