NEW DELHI: Indian American author Akhil Sharma's "Family Life" has been shortlisted for the Folio Prize, a popular English language book award, its publisher said.

'Family Life', the story of the Mishras who migrate from India to the U.S. in the late 1970s. This semi-autobiographical account of author's life is one of the eight books shortlisted for this prestigious award that is given to an English-language book published in the Britain by an author from any country. The novel is published in Britain by Faber and in India by Penguin Random House.

Sharma's novel is pitted against the likes of Colm Toibin's "Nora Webster", Ali Smith's "How to Be Both", Rachel Cusk's "Outline", "10:04" by Ben Lerner, "All My Puny Sorrows" by Miriam Toews, "Dept. of Speculation" by Jenny Offill and Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor's "Dust".

"The eight books we have chosen explore vast themes - time, loss, belonging, war, solitude, marriage and family, the making and the mystery of art, with amazing vitality and grace," jury chair William Fiennes said in a statement.

"They manage to be both epic and intimate - in fact, they show those dimensions to be two sides of the same coin. They have surprised, moved, challenged and enchanted us. They have made us laugh. They have grown and deepened when we read them again," he added. Fiennes also said that it just wasn't the richness and fire of the individual books that made it to the shortlist.

"We are excited by the range of ideas, voices and approaches represented here, and by the way our shortlist shows the novel refreshing itself, reaching out for new shapes and strategies, still discovering what it might be, what it might do," he added.

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