Penguin Random House India has announced that two of their bestselling authors, Arundhati Roy and Mohsin Hamid have been nominated by the National Book Critics Circle for the 2017 Awards. Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West are two among the five nominees in the competitive category of fiction.  

Both books, which were published to critical acclaim in 2017, are competing against Alice McDermott’s The Ninth Hour, Joan Silber’s Improvement and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing for the coveted prize.

The National Book Critics Circle Awards, begun in 1975, are the sole prizes bestowed by a jury of over 1000 working critics and book-review editors. The awards will be presented on 15 March 2018 at the New School in New York City.