Amitabh Bagchi’s novel ‘Half the Night is Gone’ has bagged the 2019-prize for South Asian Literature carrying a purse of Rs 2.5 million. The award was handed over to literary writer Bagchi on the occasion of IME Nepal Literature Festival-2019 held at Barahighat in the vicinity of Fewa Lake in Pokhara. Among other literary pieces nominated for prize with ‘Half the Night is Gone’ include Jamiljan Kochai’s ’99 Nights in Logar’, ‘Bharat and Viking’, ‘Penguin Random House’, ‘America’; Madhuri Vijaya’s ‘The Far Field’, ‘Grove Press’, ‘Grove Atlantic’, ‘America’; Manoran Byapari’s ‘There is Gun Powder in the Air’; Arunima Sinha’s translation ‘Eka, Amazon Waste Land, India’; Rajkamal Jha’s ‘The City and the Sea’, ‘Hamish Hamilton’, ‘Penguin Raymond House, India’ and Sadiya Abbas’s ‘The Empty Room’. Earlier, the awards were announced in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India. This is the first time it was announced in Nepal. Surina Narula and Manhadan Rula had instituted the award in 2010.