Akhil Sharma on his Folio Prize winner ‘Family Life’: A triumph plucked from despair
Zafar Anjum
Few authors, after receiving a prestigious literary prize, wish they had not written the winning book. But Akhil Sharma, newly crowned winner of the Folio Prize, is no ordinary author – and the traumatic 13-year process of writing his acclaimed novel, he said, has left him “damaged”.
Family Life, the prize-winning work, is an intensely personal novel which fictionalises his family’s move to the US – a move that was shattered by a devastating tragedy. He started writing at the age of 30, and now, at 43, and on the night of the award, said that the effort had “shattered my youth”.
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