Nitin Sawhney, a world-class producer, songwriter, touring artist, club DJ, multi-instrumentalist and composer for theatre, dance, videogames and orchestras, was named as a judge for the 2024 Booker Prize this week.
The British Indian musician has recorded multiple albums and over 70 film and TV scores, which include adaptations of the 1981 Booker Prize winner ‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie and ‘The Namesake’ by Booker-shortlisted novelist Jhumpa Lahiri, as well as ‘Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle’, ‘Human Planet’, ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’ and a current project for Disney.
The recipient of the Ivor Novello 2017 Lifetime Achievement award, he has collaborated with other world-class artists of all kinds. He holds eight honorary doctorates from UK universities and sits on the boards of multiple charities, including Complicité. For the last four years he has been the Chair of the PRS Foundation, the UK’s funding body for new music and talent development, as well as being a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences, the British Academy of Film & Television Arts and the Grammy Awards.
A regular cultural and political commentator, he has written articles for all the major UK broadsheets and is due to release an anthology of his written work next year. His latest album, Identity, for Warner Music, was released in October 2023. He was made CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours.
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Kent-born Sawhney joins a five-member judging panel for the prestigious literary prize, chaired by artist and author Edmund de Waal and including novelist Sara Collins, fiction editor of ‘The Guardian’ newspaper Justine Jordan and Chinese-origin writer and professor Yiyun Li.
Edmund de Waal, Chair of the Booker Prize 2024 judges, noted: “Fiction expands us. Novels bring proximity to worlds and lives and voices that we may not have been aware of, taking us from what we know into what we can only imagine. They renew language, change the shape of storytelling and above everything else bring deep and enduring pleasure.
“The great ambition of the Booker Prize is to explore contemporary fiction without preconceptions, and I am so privileged to be sharing my year of reading with such a gloriously distinguished and vigorous group of fellow explorers. I am looking forward to being part of the best book club ever.”
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Publishers in the UK and Ireland can start submitting entries in the English language of long-form fiction by an author of any nationality. A long list of the “Booker Dozen” of 12 or 13 books will be announced in July 2024, with the shortlist of six books to follow in September. The winner of the £50,000 Booker Prize 2024 will be announced in November next year, with each of the six shortlisted authors also receiving £2,500.