15 OCTOBER 2015: Jamaican author wins man booker prize

Ø  The Modi government is likely to appoint Gujarat cadre IAS officer Girish Chandra Murmu as director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is currently looked after by IPS officer Karnal Singh as special director of the body, which deals with cases related to money laundering, black money and economic crime. His putative appointment will come at a time when the agency is dealing with some crucial cases such as the one on National Herald involving Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi.

Ø  Jamaican writer Marlon James has been named the winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2015 for his novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. It is the first Booker Prize to be won by a Jamaican, and the first for its independent publisher Oneworld Publications. Mr. James’s book was chosen from a shortlist of seven writers, who included the bookies favourite Hanya Yanagihara for A Little Life, and the British writer of Indian origin Sunjeev Sahota for The Year of the Runaways. Set in Jamaica, the 686-page book is a fictionalized history on the attempted murder of the reggae singer, Bob Marley, in 1976. Mr. James (44) — who with his dreadlocks tamed into a ponytail at the back of his head — looks like a reggae artist himself, described his feelings as “surreal” in his acceptance speech. He dedicated his award to his late father from whom he said he had acquired his “literary sensitivities.”