Malayalam literary publishing house DC Books CEO to receive French civilian honour

Ravi Deecee to eeceive prestigious French award

Deecee, the head of the prominent Malayalam literary publishing house, is one of only a few Indian publishers to receive the French award. Previous recipients of the honour include Roli Books founder Pramod Kapoor and Aditi Maheswari, the CEO of Vani Prakashan Group.

The award ceremony will be held at the Embassy of France in Delhi on December 4. Set up in 1957 by the French government, Order of Arts and Letters recognises significant contributions to the arts and literature.

Previous winners of the French award from Kerala include Malayalam filmmakers Adoor Gopalakrishan and Shaji N Karun, writer M Mukundan and space scientist V R Lalithambika.

Gopalakrishnan received the Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2013, an honour also won by Bengali director Mrinal Sen and actor Sharmila Tagore and among others, English poet T S Eliot, Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurasowa and Indian-origin artist Anish Kapoor.

Among the recipients of the Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters, the second of the three-category awards, is HT Media chairperson and editorial director Shobhana Bhartia. Indian winners of the Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters, the third in the awards category, include actors Nandita Das, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan.

A legacy of literary excellence

Deecee is the founder and chief facilitator of the Kerala Literature Festival (KLF), held annually in Kerala’s historic city of Kozhikode, which was named City of Literature by UNESCO two years ago. The DC Books, founded by his father and freedom fighter Dominic Chacko Kizhakemuri, celebrated its golden jubilee last year.

Based in Kottayam, called Kerala’s publishing capital, DC Books publishes more than 400 titles every year, including books by emerging Malayalam writers and translations from many Indian and foreign languages.

Deecee, one of the influential publishers in the country, also heads Current Books, India’s second-largest chain of book shops. The KLF, organised by the DC Kizhakemuri Foundation, has grown to become one of the largest literature festivals in the world since its first edition in 2016 on the beachfront in Kozhikode. Held in January, the festival was attended by about half-a-million visitors this year.

France was the guest nation at the KLF in January this year. Among the French writers in attendance at the festival were French-American economist Esther Duflo, who shared the 2019 Nobel Prize for Economics with her husband Abhijit Banerjee.

DC Books has published many French literary titles into Malayalam, including Ivorian author GauZ’s 2014 novel Debout-payé (Standing Heavy), which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023.

In January this year, DC Books published the Malayalam translation of East Germany-born author Jenny Erpenbeck’s acclaimed novel, Kairos, which won the International Booker Prize last year. Erpenbeck was a speaker at the KLF this year.

Last year, Deecee won the Best International Publisher Award by the Sharjah government.