“The Old Man of Kusumpur” Wins O. Henry Prize 2022

Cover of The Best Short Stories 2022: The O. Henry Prize Winners, edited by Valeria Luiselli. The text is in a white box in the upper left corner, and the rest shows a design of orange ovals on a purple backdrop

We are thrilled to announce that “The Old Man of Kusumpur,” written by Amar Mitra and translated from the Bengali by Anish Gupta, has been selected for the O. Henry Prize for 2022. The story was originally published in The Common Online. An anthology of the winning stories, edited by Valeria Luiselli, will be released this September from Anchor. 

This is the first year the O. Henry Prize series has considered fiction in translation. In the prize announcement, series editor Jenny Minton Quigley writes, “If stories give us a window through which to momentarily enter the soul of another person, then translated stories magically transcend the limits of the language that has shaped our consciousness.

View the full list of winners and read more about the prize at LitHub.

Congratulations to Amar, Anish, and all the winners!

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“The Old Man of Kusumpur” Wins O. Henry Prize 2022

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