Who among the following Indian novelists and journalists is/are part of the five member jury for the 2026 International Booker Prize ? 1. Natasha Brown 2. Kiran Desai 3. Nilanjana S. Roy 4. Rajni Chauhan Select the correct answer from the code given below : Code :
- (a)2 and 3
- (b)Only 3
- (c)3 and 4
- (d)Only 1
Correct — B, only 3, Nilanjana S. Roy. She is the Indian novelist and columnist named to the five-member judging panel announced in 2025 for the 2026 International Booker Prize; the other confirmed members of that panel are the mathematician and writer Marcus du Sautoy, the translator Sophie Hughes and the writer Troy Onyango. Roy is the only Indian on it, which is exactly what the question is testing: it asks which of the listed 'Indian novelists and journalists' is on the panel, and she is a working columnist as well as a novelist, the author of 'The Wildings', 'The Hundred Names of Darkness' and 'Black River'. None of the other three names belongs on the panel. Kiran Desai was in the 2025 Booker news cycle as an author, not as a judge; Natasha Brown is a British novelist; and 'Rajni Chauhan' does not correspond to any member of the jury. Only statement 3 survives, so the code gives (b).
- (a)2 and 3 — Nilanjana S. Roy belongs, but Kiran Desai does not. Desai is on the wrong side of the prize — she is a Booker author, not a Booker judge. She won the Booker Prize in 2006 for 'The Inheritance of Loss', and she was back in the 2025 Booker Prize news cycle as the author of the novel 'The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny'. That fresh publicity is precisely why the examiner planted her here.
- (c)3 and 4 — Statement 4 is a manufactured name. 'Rajni Chauhan' does not correspond to any member of the 2026 International Booker jury, and inserting one invented name beside one genuine one is a standing UPPSC device — it converts a question about a five-member panel into a test of whether you actually recognise the individual or are pattern-matching on plausible-sounding Indian names.
- (d)Only 1 — Natasha Brown is a real and well-regarded novelist — the author of 'Assembly' — but she is British rather than Indian, and she is not among the confirmed members of the 2026 International Booker panel. The question's own wording, 'Indian novelists and journalists', is the hint that she does not fit.
The International Booker Prize is the translation half of the Booker family, and it is a different award from the Booker Prize proper. The Booker Prize goes to a novel originally written in English; the International Booker Prize is awarded annually for a single book translated into English and published in the United Kingdom or Ireland, and its prize money of fifty thousand pounds is split equally between the author and the translator. In its earlier form as the Man Booker International Prize, before 2016, it was given once every two years to a living author of any nationality for a whole body of work — which is why older questions on it read so differently. Each year's winner is chosen by a small judging panel announced well in advance, and it was the panel for the 2026 prize, announced during 2025, that this question is drawn from.
Award questions in UPPSC's current-affairs block are almost always won or lost on one distinction, and here it is the distinction between being judged and judging. Every wrong name in this list is famous for authorship: Kiran Desai for winning the Booker in 2006 and for being in the 2025 news cycle with a new novel, Natasha Brown for 'Assembly'. Only Nilanjana S. Roy appears in the 2025 announcements as a judge. Two habits protect you. First, read the qualifier in the stem — 'Indian novelists and journalists' quietly disqualifies the British Natasha Brown. Second, treat an unfamiliar plain-sounding name in a list of otherwise well-known writers as a probable invention rather than an obscure fact; UPPSC uses fabricated names as filler far more often than it uses genuinely obscure ones. Anchor everything to the exam date of 12 October 2025: the panel had been announced by then, while the 2026 prize itself was still to be awarded.
- Nilanjana S. Roy is an Indian columnist and novelist — 'The Wildings', 'The Hundred Names of Darkness' and 'Black River' — and is on the five-member judging panel announced for the 2026 International Booker Prize
- The other confirmed members of that panel are Marcus du Sautoy, Sophie Hughes and Troy Onyango
- The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for a single book translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland, and the fifty-thousand-pound prize is split equally between author and translator
- Before 2016, as the Man Booker International Prize, it went once every two years to a living author for a body of work rather than for a single translated book
- The 2025 International Booker went to Banu Mushtaq's 'Heart Lamp', translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi — the first Kannada work and the first short-story collection to win, and the first win by an Indian translator
- The 2022 prize went to Geetanjali Shree's 'Tomb of Sand' (Ret Samadhi), translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell — the first novel written in an Indian language to win
- Kiran Desai won the Booker Prize itself in 2006 for 'The Inheritance of Loss'; that is a different award, for fiction originally written in English
Only statement 3 is true, so the answer is (b). The other confirmed panel members are Marcus du Sautoy, Sophie Hughes and Troy Onyango.
- Confusing the International Booker Prize with the Booker Prize; the first is for translated work and is shared with the translator, the second is for fiction originally in English
- Assuming any famous Indian writer in the year's news must be on the jury — Kiran Desai was in the 2025 Booker news as an author
- Missing the qualifier in the stem: the question asks about Indian novelists and journalists, which rules out the British Natasha Brown
- Taking an unfamiliar name in the option list at face value; UPPSC frequently pads such lists with names that do not exist in the context
UPPSC puts one or two award questions in every paper and asks them at the level of who won or who is on the panel this year, sometimes with a fabricated name in the list, as with the 2019 question on the Booker winner; UPSC almost never asks jury composition and prefers the rules of the award or the identity of a work's author.
For which one of the following books did Kiran Desai win the Man Booker Prize 2006?
- (a) The Secret River
- (b) In the Country of Men
- (c) The Inheritance of Loss
- (d) Mother's Milk
Answer(c) The Inheritance of Loss
The direct antidote to this question's main trap. UPSC's answer places Kiran Desai where she actually belongs in Booker history — as the winner of the 2006 prize for 'The Inheritance of Loss', an author and not a judge, which is why statement 2 here is false.
Consider the following statements: 1. The Man Booker Prize is awarded to citizens of any of the countries of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. 2. A leading London-based software company underwrites the Man Booker Prize presently. 3. The winner of the Man Booker Prize in the year 2004 is a South Asian. Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- (a) 1 only
- (b) 1 and 3
- (c) 2 and 3
- (d) 1, 2 and 3
Answer(a) 1 only
Tests the rules of the prize rather than a name, which is the durable knowledge behind this question: who is eligible, who funds it, and who won in a given year. Knowing that the Booker family is defined by its rules is what lets you separate the Booker Prize from the International Booker Prize under exam pressure.
The author of the Booker Prize Winner 2019 book "Girl, Women, Other" is
- (a) Margaret Atwood
- (b) Elif Shafak
- (c) Salman Rushdie
- (d) Bernadine Evaristo
Answer(d) Bernadine Evaristo
The same commission asking the same award six years earlier, and in the same shape — a list of well-known writers of whom only one fits the year. That 2019 item also turned on a detail of the jury's conduct, since the panel broke the rules and split the 2019 prize between Bernardine Evaristo and Margaret Atwood.
- practice — not a real PYQ
'Heart Lamp', which won the International Booker Prize in 2025, was translated into English from which one of the following languages?
- (a)Hindi
- (b)Kannada
- (c)Malayalam
- (d)Bengali
Answer(b) Kannada — Banu Mushtaq's short-story collection was translated by Deepa Bhasthi, and it was the first Kannada work and the first short-story collection to win the prize.
- practice — not a real PYQ
'Tomb of Sand' (Ret Samadhi), the first novel originally written in an Indian language to win the International Booker Prize, was written by
- (a)Geetanjali Shree
- (b)Anuradha Roy
- (c)Banu Mushtaq
- (d)Arundhati Roy
Answer(a) Geetanjali Shree — the Hindi novel won in 2022, translated by Daisy Rockwell, with the prize money shared equally between author and translator.