Akhil Sharma is announced as the winner of The Folio Prize 2015 for Family Life published by Faber. The Folio Prize is sponsored by The Folio Society, the celebrated publisher of beautiful editions of the world’s greatest books.The Folio Prize 2015, worth £40,000, aims to recognise and celebrate the best English-language fiction from around the world, published in the UK during a given year, regardless of form, genre or the author’s country of origin. It is the first major English-language book prize open to writers from all over the world.
Family Life, which was selected by the New York Times as one of their Top Ten Books of the Year for 2014 is Akhil Sharma’s second novel. It took 13 years to complete and publish and blurs the boundaries between memoir and fiction. Family Life is a heart-wrenching and darkly comic story of a boy torn between duty and survival.