The Winning Story: Himal Short Story Competition 2019

The editors at Himal Southasian are delighted to announce the winner of our end-of-year short story competition:

‘Milk’ by Mashiul Alam, translated from Bangla into English by Shabnam Nadiya.

The editors were in complete agreement about our admiration for the story and its elegant translation. The story took us on a journey of the imagination, a world unto itself. It is a story with so much of life in it ­– humans, animals, open fields; a social, a natural and a supernatural world – and yet with an eye for minute details and an arresting turn of phrase. We marvelled that the story is so lucidly told and the translation so seamless and beautiful in its retelling. Here, we felt, is a story being told to us, that could be spoken or written, that held us in its thrall and led us beyond ourselves.

The winners will receive prize money of USD 500, split equally between writer and translator, and their story will be published at the launch of Himal’s new website in the new year. We look forward to sharing the story with our readers.

Congratulations to the winners and our thanks to all the writers who took part in this competition.

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~ See the shortlist for the 2019 short story competition.