Semi-autobiographical ‘Family Life’ wins the Folio Prize for Akhil Sharma

Akhil Sharma’s second novel, FAMILY LIFE, has won the Folio Prize which is given to a work of fiction written in English and published in Britain and carries an award of approximately $60,000.

William Fiennes, who chaired the committee of judges called it a “lucid, compassionate, quietly funny account of one family’s life across continents and cultures.”

Sharma has said that the book is semi-autobiographical, but is not a memoir. “For me, a memoir is nonfiction and nonfiction has to be absolutely true.” However, he added, “Almost everything in the novel is true.” (“A Conversation Between Akhil Sharma and Mohsin Hamid,”