Wednesday, March 30 2005 15:45 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Houston: An Indian and a Pakistani author have been jointly awarded this year's international Kiriyama Prize for their outstanding contribution to literature.

Suketu Mehta and his Pakistani counterpart Nadeem Aslam will share the $ 30,000 cash prize presented by Pacific Rim Voices, an independent non-profit organisation for their novels 'Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found' and 'Maps for Lost Lovers.'

Mehta, who co-wrote the Bollywood film 'Mission Kashmir,' based his non-fiction book on his return to Mumbai, the city of his birth, to find it drastically altered from the city he once knew.

To put a human face on the world's third largest city, Mehta skilfully weaves a narrative encompassing his own experiences and impressions together with a series of personal interviews with a variety of Mumbai's citizens.

Susan Saidenberg, one of the judges for non-fiction and director of exhibitions and programmes at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York said, "The resulting book is a surprisingly empathetic, fascinating, and revealing group portrait."

Aslam's book is set among the Pakistani community of an unnamed English town. The novel opens with the disappearance of two lovers, Chanda and Jugnu.