PTI
 
London, Feb 9: Indian authors Vikram Chandra and Gautam Malkani are among the regional shortlists for the 21st Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and Best First Book Awards.

An international judging panel, made up of Chair Professor Angela Smith (UK), Supriya Chaudhuri (India) and Aamer Hussain (UK) chose the books from an impressive list of 116 entries, an official announcement said in London.

Vikram Chandra's book Sacred Games, short-listed for the Best Book Award, is a brilliant, enormous beast of a novel about the Mumbai underworld, beginning with a face-off between a tough cop, the 'silky Sikh' Sartaj, and a holed-up gangster who begins to tell him the story of his life (before killing himself).

The dead gangster's account becomes a crucial element in the novel. The book is gripping despite its length, mixing the narrative strengths of Victorian fiction, the Chandleresque whodunit and Bollywood movies.

Others short-listed for the Best Book Award are Patricia Duncker (Miss Webster and Cherif), Yasmine Gooneratne (The Sweet and Simple Kind), M J Hyland (Carry Me Down), David Mitchell (Black Swan Green), Naeem Murr (The Perfect Man) and James Robertson (The Testament of Gideon Mack).

Gautam Malkani was shortlisted for the Best First Book Award for Londonstani. Others in contention for the award are Yasmin Crowther (The Saffron Kitchen), Emma Darwin (The Mathematics of Love), Reina James (This Time of Dying), J M Ledgard (Giraffe), and Hisam Matar (In the Country of Men).