Indian-American author Akhil Sharma bags top Irish award

The Delhi-born New Yorker has already bagged the 2015 Folio Prize worth 40,000 pounds for his autobiographical novel that tells the tale of how a family moves from Delhi to New York, where the older brother has an accident that leaves him brain-damaged and in need of 24-hour care.

“I got the email telling me I had won, my first thought was ‘thank God, another disappointment avoided’. It hurts when you don’t get something, so I was just relieved to not have pain,” the 44-year-old author told ‘The Guardian’ in Dublin.

“I don’t believe that a prize means it’s the best book.All a prize means is that it is the book which has won a prize, that it’s the one judges agreed on. But it’s a great honour, it’s a prize I have known about for decades, and I admire the books which have won,” he said.