Statisticians Rejoice
Manil Suri won a
literary prize in December for his novel The City of Devi, but it’s not
exactly a prize that authors covet. Literary Review, a British literary
magazine, awarded him the 21st Bad Sex in Fiction Award. He became only the
second author of Indian origin to win the award, joining Aniruddha Bahal, who
won it in 2003 for his spy thriller Bunker 13.
The judges were
“impressed” with the following passage from Suri’s novel, describing a scene
involving three characters:
“Surely supernovas
explode that instant, somewhere, in some galaxy. The hut vanishes, and with it
the sea and the sands—only Karun’s body, locked with mine, remains. We streak
like superheroes past suns and solar systems, we dive through shoals of quarks
and atomic nuclei. In celebration of our breakthrough fourth star,
statisticians the world over rejoice.”
Suri can be
forgiven for the last line—he is,
after all, a mathematics professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County
(UMBC), and just couldn’t help himself.
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