The long-awaited inaugural longlist for the Man Asian Literary Prize has been announced:Tulsi Badrinath - The Living GodThe prize, worth $10,000 focuses on new works as yet unpublished in English and aims to encourage the publication of more works by Asian writers. This year 243 submissions were received, from both established and first time authors, and included translated works as well as works originally in English. the shortlist will be announced in October, and the winner on November 10th, 2007.
Sanjay Bahadur - The Sound Of Water
Kankana Basu - Cappuccino Dusk
Sanjiv Bhatla - InJustice
Shahbano Bilgrami - Without Dreams
Saikat Chakraborty- The Amnesiac
Jose Dalisay Jr. - Soledad's Sister
Reeti Gadekar - Families at Home
Xiaolu Guo - 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
Ameena Hussein - The Moon in the Water
Nu Nu Yi Inwa - Smile As They Bow
Jiang Rong - Wolf Totem
Hitomi Kanehara - Autofiction
N S Madhavan - Litanies of Dutch Battery
Laxmi Narayan Mishra -The Little God
Mo Yan- Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
Nalini Rajan - The Pangolin's Tale
Chiew-Siah Tei - Little Hut of Leaping Fishes
Shreekumar Varma - Maria's Room
Anuradha Vijayakrishnan - Seeing The Girl
Sujatha Vijayaraghavan - Pichaikuppan
Xu Xi - Habit of a Foreign Sky
Egoyan Zheng - Fleeting Light
Among the best known authors on the list are Xiaolu Guo who wrote the Orange-shortlisted A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, and Hitomi Kanehara's whose first novel Snakes and Earrings was a smash-hit in Japan. More about the award on the Guardian website and information about all the writers in this press release.
There is also a Malaysian on the list- Chiew-Siah Tei, born in Tampin, Negeri Sembilan. She is a bilingual writer who has already won a series of awards with her Chinese prose including the Hua ZongInternational Chinese Fiction Award. She scripted Night Swimmer which won Best Short Film at Vendome International Film Festival. Her play, Three Thousand Troubled Threads, was staged at Edinburgh International Festival. Little Hut of Leaping Fishes is her first novel in English.
Chiew-Siah studied creative writing at Glasgow University and here novelist and tutor Alasdair Gray writes about the novel he saw in progress.
Meanwhile controversy continues to dog the award, particularly with regard to the selection of the judges. Asia Sentinel brings the story up to date. (And thanks C for the link.)
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