By Amit Roy
JASBINDER BILAN, a school teacher who writes in her spare time, has won the Costa Children’s Book Award for Asha & The Spirit Bird, a tale inspired by her late grandmother and set in the Himalayan foothills where the author was born.
The story is about Asha’s search for her missing father, “guided by a majestic bird” which the little girl “believes to be the spirit of her grandmother”.
“Wow! We unanimously lost our hearts to this gorgeous book,” was the response of the judges who considered 144 entries.
Jasbinder, who lives near Bath with her husband and her two sons, was not even two when her family moved to Nottingham from India.
“But we kept India alive by continuing to talk about our farm and all the funny things that happened there during the big family gatherings we had,” she said.
Her love of writing was encouraged by her primary school teachers, while her father ensured all his six children used the local library, she added.
Jasbinder and the winners of the novel, first novel, biography and poetry categories – all five receive £3,000 each – are now in contention for the £30,000 Costa Book of the Year, which will be announced on January 28.
There has been one other Indian winner before – Kishwar Desai, whose husband is the Labour peer Meghnad Desai, won the first novel category for Witness the Night, about sex trafficking, in 2010
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