Regional Commonwealth Prizes Announced

The regional winners of the Commonwealth Prize have been announced, but are not yet up on the official website. (Will append them as soon as.)

Sadly, our Preeta didn't get the Best First Book Prize for the South East Asia and the South Pacific region - that went instead to New Zealand's Mo Zhi Hong (left) for Shanghai Shark :

... the story of young boy's rite of passage as he enters into the bustling, cosmopolitan street life of the contemporary Chinese cities of Dalian and Shanghai, under the tutelage of his uncle, a professional pickpocket.

Mo was born in Singapore, but grew up in Taiwan, China, Canada, the US and New Zealand. he worked as a software developer in New York, and later as an English teacher in north-east China, before returning to New Zealand. He lives in Aukland.

You can hear an interview with him here.

The region's best novel prize went to Australian Christos Tsiolkas who won against some very stiff opposition. His novel The Slap :

... begins with a four-year-old child being slapped at a barbecue in Melbourne's northern suburbs by someone who is not a family member. The uproar that follows is seen from the points of view of eight distinctly drawn characters and puts family loyalty, friendships and social ethics into a fierce crucible.

Jhumpa Lahiri won the Europe and South Asia Heat Best Book Award with Unaccustomed Earth, her collection of stories which has been sweeping all before it, and was praised by the judges for its :

...lyrical, meticulously crafted prose, with the moving and memorable treatment of the diasporic experience coupled with her significant achievement in extending the form of the short story

Mohammed Hanif won in the first book category for his novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes :

... a darkly comic tour de force which takes as its starting point the plane crash which killed Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq. Praised for its "amazingly detailed and plausible portrayal of historical events", as well as its "great political insight and stylistic virtuosity" ...

This is the first time a Pakistani has been a regional winner.

The overall winners of the Commonwealth Writers Prize will be announced in mid-May.

The Awful Things That Happen to Imran

One author I very much enjoyed meeting in Ubud was Imran Ahmad (right above with ABC broadcaster Annie Gastin). Imran writes about his experiences growing up Muslim in Britain most engagingly in his memoir Unimagined : A Muslim Boy Meets the West which I've marked down as a must-read.

Well last night, Imran wrote to send me a link to his not-quite-a-blog with his delightful account of the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (entitled, with a beautiful irony as you will see, Why, oh why, do these awful things always happen to me?).

There's much else interesting to read on the site so do go poke around.

I am trying to twist Imran's arm to come visit us over here. My worry is that he has been totally spoiled by the Bali experience!

Bali Photos (2)

Remember Camilla Gibb who was in KL last year for the literary festival? Well her novel Sweetness in the Belly which many of you have enjoyed has now been translated into Bahasa Indonesia with the title Lilly : Pencarian Cinta Seorang Gadis Eropa di Etiopia. Wouldn't it be nice to have a Bahasa Malaysia version for the local market??

Pakistani author Moni Mohsin now lives in London, and her debut novel The End of Innocence was published in 2006. Really enjoyed talking to her at the dinner at Karim Razlan's house.

The last session on the last day was defintely one of the best. Deepika Shetty was in conversation with Mexican master of magical realism Alberto Ruy Sanchez. It is impossible to listen to him and not fall in love.

Guess what? Bernice discovered that he will be stopping over in KL next week and plans to get him to do a reading. (More news about this later when it's fixed up.)

And here's our Bernice between sessions.

Pakistan's Fast Bowlers

Shashi Tharoor writing in The Times of India (found via The Complete Review) finds that although Pakistani Fiction in English got off to a slow start :

... the Pakistani diaspora has in recent years produced a remarkable series of novels with affinities to Pakistan and with narratives often set there ...

among them Mohsin Hamid :

... whose two novels Moth Smoke and The Reluctant Fundamentalist notably finally woke up the rest of the world to Pakistani fiction in English.

and several younger writers including Nadeem Aslam (right) (Maps for Lost Lovers). Tharoor mentions too the debut of two remarkable novels - Mohammed Hanif's :

... exuberant and risk-taking A Case of Exploding Mangoes

and Ali Sethi whose :

... about-to-be-published novel, set in Lahore, is the story of a fatherless Pakistani boy rose in a family of outspoken women, and has already received a gigantic advance. Even India hasn't yet produced a 23-year-old world-class author. The future of Pakistani writing in English seems not just secure, but exciting.

Mohsin Hamid (left) has apparently identified an interesting phenomena which he calls the "fast-bowler effect", which is something we're also experiencing here in Malaysia :

... one writer, like one fast bowler in a cricket team, finds it difficult to make an impact, but when there is at least a pair of them, the world suddenly starts taking the team seriously.

(Image at top by Hamzah Shah on Flickr.)