Kochi, Jun 20: Samsung India and Sahitya Akademi felicitated the best literary contributions by writers in seven Indian languages at the ‘Tagore Literature Awards’ presentation ceremony held in Kochi recently.

Named after the legendary poet, Sri Rabindranth Tagore, the ‘Tagore Literature Awards’ were presented to the writers in recognition of their excellence in the regional literary community.

Organised at the AJ Hall in Kaloor, the glittering awards function saw literary works in English, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Nepali and Sindhi being awarded. The winners whose works covered different genres of novels, poetry, short stories and drama between 2007 – 2009 are: Amitav Ghosh for ‘Sea of Poppies’ (English); Sheela Kolambkar for ‘Geera’ (Konkani); Jagdish Prasad Mandal for ‘Gaamak Jingi’ (Maithili); Akkitham Achyuthan Nambudiri for ‘Anthimahakaalam’ (Malayalam); N Kunjamohan Singh for ‘Eina Kenge Kenba Natte’ (Manipuri); Indramani Darnal for ‘Krishna Krishna’ (Nepali) and Arjan Hasid for ‘ NA IEN NA’ (Sindhi).

The Tagore Literature Awards have, over the past two years (2009 and 2010), recognized literary works across different genres of novels, poetry, short stories essays, biography/autobiography and plays etc. In 2009, writers in Bengali, Bodo, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Punjabi and Telugu were felicitated, while the second edition of the awards honored literary works in Assamese, Dogri, Marathi, Odia, Rajasthani, Santali, Tamil and Urdu.