The Editor-in-Chief of The Indian Express cum author Raj Kamal Jha has won the 3rd Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize for his novel, "The City and The Sea".

This was announced by the organiser and publisher Peter Bundalo on Monday. Incidentally, Jha is a 1988 graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, where he studied Mechanical Engineering. He had joined the Indian Express as its Deputy Editor(Operations) and then was Executive Editor.

So far as this prestigious award is concerned, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the winner of the USD 5,000 prize was announced online in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Jha's book, which is based on the December 2012 Nirbhaya rape and murder case, was chosen from ten shortlisted books including Amitav Ghosh' "Gun Island", Nirmala Govindarajan's "Taboo", and Ranjit Hoskote's "Jonahwhale".

"In this brilliant work of fiction Raj Kamal Jha succeeds in making us witnesses to the vastness of existences, possibilities, hopes and dreams annulled by an act of horrific violence rooted in inveterate biases in how malignant to each other we believe we have a right to be.

"Genuinely concerned with present-day afflictions, this novel is a lament of the flawed society, evocation to all who perished in violation of their fundamental rights, but also a ray of hope for a different humankind, awake to our intrinsic unity, even in sorrow," said Maja Markunovic, member of the jury and Literary Director of Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize.