Simon & Schuster has named Tara Dorabji the winner of its 2022 Books Like Us First Novel Prize, which comes with the opportunity to enter into a $50,000 book deal with S&S. Her novel, Fire, is an intergenerational story set against the backdrop of military occupation, with a fictional setting that draws much from occupied Kashmir. Dorabji is a writer, radio journalist, filmmaker, and v-p at the Center for Cultural Power.
Emma Deshpande, for her novel Spiral, and Valentine Marie, for her novel Hymn for the Broken, were this year's semifinalists.
The Books Like Us contest was launched in 2021. The contest rotates among the various S&S adult imprints, with this year's contest hosted by the Simon & Schuster adult trade imprint; last year's was hosted by Gallery Books. Last year's inaugural winner was Elba Iris Pérez, whose novel The Things We Didn't Know will be published by Gallery in the spring of 2024.
