Australia-Asia Won by Malouf

This is a much overdue post (sorry!) on the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Prize which was won by David Malouf (left) for his collection The Complete Stories. It is really nice to see the short story in good health after dire prognostications were made of its demise, and this sounds a fine book.

The award is an important one as chief judge Nury Vittachi said at the prize dinner:

There's a massive change coming up and Asia will be the world's hot spot. The bulk of the world's consumers are here in the Asia-Pacific, and they're going to need books set here. Asia on its own can't climb on to the world contemporary literature stage easily and neither can Australia. Put the two together, and they're unbeatable. People are not recognising this. But this award does, so I do hope they continue it. ... You've got this fabulous market right here: there are four billion Asians, they're all obsessed by education and almost all of them studying English. So what do they do? They go out and buy English books.

Let's hope more Asian voices will find their way onto the longlist in future years ... including, if it isn't tempting fate to wish this, some of our own.

Nury the Chief Judge

Author Nury Vittachi has long championed the cause of writing in Asia. He started the Asian Literary Review, was co-founder of the Hong Kong Literary Festival and was instrumental is setting up the Man Asia Literary Prize before being sacked from the organizing committee after a row about racial insensitivity.

Now Nury has now been named chief judge of Australasia's newest and richest book prize the annual Western Australian Premier's Australia-Asia Literary Award of $110,000. It is recognition that he greatly deserves.

Paige Taylor interviews Nury in the Australian about how he believes the new award would

... kick-start a writing revolution (and) uncover some of the world's next great authors from within Asia ...

where there is as yet no equivalent to the Booker or the Pulitzer.

The award is open to :

... any book-length work of literary fiction published in print or electronically, in recognition of the increasing predominance of electronic media such as online and mobile-phone formats.

(I am absolutely thrilled that an Australian prize is open to Asian authors but as yet I have no information about who is eligible to enter and how - let me see what I can find out and here is the link to the award website and the rules for submission and entry form.)

Nury's whole life seems to be bound up with literary prizes. Ironically, it was an award winning book written by his father that once saved his family from certain death in Sri Lanka.

Do go check out Nury's blog as he has posted some of his very amusing articles and columns. I particularly enjoyed his account of lunch with Jeffrey Archer who was in Hong Kong as part of his book tour to promote his latest novel A Prisoner of Birth :

I mean, if you look up “over-achiever” in the Oxford Dictionary, you’ll find a two-word entry “Jeffrey Archer”. Consider this. The guy has a go at writing novels and writes global bestsellers. He has a go at politics and becomes chairman of the ruling party. He has a go at acting and ends up with a hit show in the West End of London. Had he decided to have a go at making a life-sized replicas of the Himalayas out of Nissin instant noodles, we would now be reading reports of mountaineers snacking their way up to 29,000 feet.

Update :

More about the award in the Age. Honestly, I'm pinching myself ...

Somewhere to Send Those Manuscripts

Nury Vittachi has some good news for the would-be published among you :

A new literary agency has been launched which is hungry for work from Asia. Osian’s Literary Agency is actively seeking new writers from the region.

“I am sure there are many good writers in the Philippines and elsewhere across Asia, who really need to be brought onto the international stage. I would love to see work from Indonesia, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and elsewhere,” said the boss, Renuka Chatterjee.

She’s the real thing. Renuka has spent 15 years in publishing, with senior roles in the South Asian operations of Penguin and HarperCollins.

Osian’s is part of a big Indian conglomerate. Already on her list are writers such as Jose Dalisay.

Here's the link to Osian's literary agency.

Good Things on Other Blogs

The latest literary gossip from local bloggers:

Is Kafka Austrian or Czech? Raman recounts a diplomatic tug of war and writes about Milan Kundera's new book The Curtain (which I was tempted to buy when I slipped into Silverfish yesterday ... such is the power of blog reviews.)

MPH Bookstores blog Redwhitespot has sadly gone under just as it was beginning to get interesting with some of May Lee's posts. I think the name had bad feng-shui and wanted to warn them, as it always made me think of a pimple. (So sorry!) May Lee and Rodney and the rest - if you feel the need for a space to blog, feel free to tumpang a space here.

Talking of MPH though, super-editor Eric Forbes has a nice post which talks about how book reviewers are developing in Malaysia - and I have to agree with him and he ties this to reviews of James Wood's essays which now I have to buy. (Expensive business, reading other book blogs.)

Eli James of Novelr wrestles valiantly with the question of purple prose.

I've not been very good at turning up for events organised by other people, much to my shame. I sincerely apologise to the folks who would like to have seen me there. I'm grateful to those who give me a vicarious glimpse of what went on, including Ted (left) who posted pictures of last months Katasuara at Raja Ahmad's gallery. Jordan Macvay (spelt right!) writes about being part of Bernice's Ceritaku storytelling event.

I've always has a great phobia of dentists, and when I can avoid 'em I do. Deepika had a very special "dentist" take a look at her teeth during a panel discussion which she was moderating at the Galle Literary festival in Sri Lanka: it was none other that Vikram Seth! (See photo right.) In his round up of festival events, Nury Vittachi tells the story :

At one point, he (Vikram) told an entertaining story about a relative who was a one-armed dentist. To illustrate the challenges involved, he put his arm around the head of moderator Deepika Shetty and duly inspected her back molars. ... What the author didn’t know – but many of the rest of us did – was that Singapore journalist Ms Shetty has just completed a lengthy dental treatment which involved carrying around a quarter of a ton of metal in her mouth for more than a year. Thus his good reports about her dentition carried great weight.

Postscript :

Oops. How did I forget to say welcome to the new Kakiseni blog?

Asian Story Arcs Revisited

Though you all may be sick of it (haha I don't care!) this Asian story arc thing is nagging at me. So much so, that I decided to enlist the help of a Malaysian literati friend or two I think should know better than me. (And if anywhere is "truly Asia", and thus in the cross currents of story telling traditions, surely Malaysia holds the title ... cue musical interlude).

Well, I mentioned the debate to my friend Chuah Guat Eng the other day when we met for coffee at D'lish. I hadn't seen her for a very long time, as she's been locked away to get her PhD with UKM finished. She was my creative writing guru at one point several years ago, and remained a writing buddy after that (I have happy memories of scribbling away over a bottle of wine at her house). She is also the author of a novel, Echoes of Silence, which cleverly subverts the detective novel genre.

She was so interested in the idea of the different story arcs that she even started a blog so that she could debate the idea!

According to Nury Vittachi, western fiction is based on the "3-act arc" of the Greek drama. The implication is that Asian narratives do not. So Vittachi brings to our attention Indian epics, like the Ramayana or the Mahabharata with "its long list of interlocking tales". He asserts that "the conventions, the structure, the format, are quite different" from western narratives. And he concludes, "To me, Asian narratives are like charm bracelets. Individual items dangle independently and have their own beauty. But a thread links them all together to create a single, larger unified item of beauty." I have two problems with Vittachi's observations.

Go read how she argues the point!

Man Asian Teething Problems

Starmag invited Nury Vittachi to write about the Man Asian prize and I think he has done a great job of filling in the background for readers and waving the flag of encouragment for Asian writers.

He also highlights some of the teething problems the prize has faced:

Getting the funds and the green light from Man Group Plc took several years. Internal boardroom battles among the organisers changed the leadership of the prize, leaving a widespread feeling that it had become controlled by Western expatriates.

There is continuing controversy over the choice of countries allowed to submit. Malaysia was accidentally omitted, but then reinstated. Other countries, such as Mongolia, are still missing from the list.

(The omission of Malaysia from the list was a small hiccup, rectified in hours; the omission of Mongolia much more serious.)

And then there is the new controversy that has sprung up since the announcement of the winner:

Critics have pointed out that while the prize was intended for authors unpublished in the West, the organisers actually handed it to a wildly successful and very wealthy writer who already has massive publishing contracts around the world.

“Jiang Rong is quite possibly the very last author in Asia who needs what the prize offers,” said an academic at the unofficial support website, themanasianliteraryprize.com. Another online literary commentator, The Literary Saloon said the prize “was created in order to facilitate publishing and translation of Asian literature in and into English – so, of course, the first time they hand out the award, they give it to the one title that has already gotten heaps of international press and been sold for large advances!”

The book has already sold two million copies ... and there's the possiblity that penguin deliberately held back the publication of the English edition of the book so that it could be entered for the prize.

One anonymous commenter on the letter page of the Man Asian Literary Prize site (the unofficial one) says:

Jiang Rong's book was purchased by Penguin in 2005 and translation work started afterwards with the book scheduled to be published in English on the Penguin 2007 list. However it was delayed until March 2008 thus becoming eligible under a technicality to be entered for this this prize for unpublished works. You can check with contacts at Penguin.

But of course, the judges can only chose the best of the novels in front of them, and even if Penguin did manipulate their timing of events, they certainly did nothing illegal.

I guess the mechanics of the award will be closely scrutinised for the future. But anyway, what is a literary prize without a little controversy?

Worth reading on the aftermath of the prize is the very well written piece by an "UK academic specializing in Asian Studies" quoted in Nury's article.

Nice of Nury by the way to mention my blog:

... one of the liveliest discussion venues in Asia for debate about the prize.

(Ahem!)

and the controversy we stirred about the Asian story arc thing. I am not finished with the topic yet (at least in my own head if not on the blog) and won't be for a while!

But it is so nice to feel that there is a wider discussion going on about Asian writing and how to grow and encourage it. I'm really glad Nury agreed to write for us and hope he will do so again.

There's also a very good review by Janet Tay of The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. Must read this.

Are Asian Stories Different?

Hang on! There's something else as well!

I dropped by Nury Vittachi's blog and found that after deliberately not writing about the controversy for months

because it is important that the focus goes on the writers, not on the backstage shenanigans

he was lured out to comment once more on the choice of judges for the prize:

Not only was it racially and culturally insensitive, but it raised some massive issues ...

he said. And this seemed to be the massivest:

Asian story arcs differ significantly from Western ones.* Our narrative traditions are also totally different. And modern Asian story conventions are simply not the same as classic ones, nor Western ones, nor do they trace their roots to the Greek drama form which is the bedrock of Western tale-spinning. I failed miserably to get any of the organizers to understand these issues or take them seriously.

(*My emphasis.)

Now this question intrigues me because I must say that I hadn't given it much thought until The Stars Rise in the East panel discussion at the Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival when Xu Xi (who is incidentally one of the shortlisted authors for the Man Asian) talked about how Asian ways of telling stories differ from western ways.

Let me quote Ann Lee's article on the festival which appeared in Off the Edge, because clearly Ann was taking better notes than me!:

Xu Xi, maintains that there are Asian ways of storytelling - a climax at the end of the story is 'very western, very Greek'. She suggested, wryly, that perhaps as in the tale of Buddha, a short story should just 'mosey along, this way and that, and then one day achieve enlightenment if it happens'.

Xu Xi slipped in a very interesting example from the work of psychologist Richard Nisbett showing how groups of Asians and westerners tended to read the same news article very differently. (I wish I had the exact quote ...).

So Nury's point, I suppose, is that because Asians think differently, this is going to be reflected in the way that Asian authors write and therefore the best people to judge the writing and understand the cultural nuances are people with the same way of perceiving the world i.e. other Asians.

The influence of different writing traditions would, I suppose, have to be factored in too.

Now all this leaves me once again with more questions than answers. Would be grateful if you could help me out, dear reader, because you are likely to have a broader perspective than I have.

The Man Asian prize remember is for a novel, that most western of literary forms.

First, do Asian stories and Asian novel (particularly for us here Malay novels, Chinese novels) have a different story arc from western novels?

Would this be true also of Asian movies vs their western counterparts?

Is good storytelling the same thing in all cultures?

Are Malaysian novelists writing in Malay or in Chinese or in English more influenced by the literary traditions of those languages, or by western writing ... or indeed by other factors?

(As British novelist Patrick Gale pointed out in another session at Ubud, the dominant form of story telling now is the computer game and probably this is even truer in Asia than in the west!)

And if one of the aims of the prize is win Asian writers greater exposure and acceptance internationally, doesn't their work also have to succeed by western standards?

I've a feeling that Nury has opened up a big can of worms with this talk about story arcs and I suspect it would take a lengthy academic thesis to even begin answering the question!

Still, the debate could be very interesting!

Absense of Asianness?

A South Asian journalist who does not wish to be named and is moonlighting from her newspaper sent me this article (unpublished in the press) and I thought it might interest you too:

COLONIALISM FEAR OVERSHADOWS ‘ASIAN’ PRIZE

Asians submit, but Western expats stand in judgment

November 6, 2007

THE NAME of the Asian author who will receive the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize will be finally revealed on Saturday, November 10th. But will the names of the people giving out the prize also become more apparent?

The press release doesn’t give the organizer’s names. Communications tend to use the term “Administrative Committee”. Even the front pages of their website prefer to use that anonymous phrase, with the actual names tucked away on deeper link. Why are administrators so shy about revealing who they are?

The prize is for authors from most countries in Asia, but the administrative team consists entirely of a small group of Western expatriates living in Hong Kong: none are Asian. The organization also includes a three-person judging team: two from North America and one from Australia. Although one is Chinese-Canadian, not one of the judges lives or works in Asia.

The missing Asian roots at the top of the organization has been noticed by critics, and the administration’s reticence about pushing themselves forward suggests they’re also aware that this issue could crucially undermine the prize’s legitimacy in many eyes.

ABSENSE OF ASIAN-NESS

The absence of Asian-ness is curious given that the prize grew out of a very Asian journal called the Asia Literary Review, started in 1999 by Hong Kong-based Sri Lankan author Nury Vittachi and Indonesian-Chinese novelist Xu Xi. The journal, like the award, is for “works as yet unpublished in English”, a clever concept that enabled its editors to include Asian authors who initially produce their work in their vernacular languages (as Chinese and Indonesian authors do) and those who work in English (as many South Asian authors do).

The new prize was born in January last year. Vittachi made a presentation to the board of director of Man Group plc, sponsors of the Man Booker Prize, showing how this principle could be used as the foundation of an award. He received a green light on the spot.

But in the weeks that followed, Vittachi changed the way his book distributor. His former distributor Peter Gordon, who was handling the paperwork for the prize, suddenly became chairman of a separate prize organization and banned the author from any involvement. The shocked Vittachi cried foul, but it was too late. Resources from Man Group plc for the prize went to Gordon’s new organization.

HOST OF ISSUES

Since then, there has been a host of issues debated in a row which has “convulsed the Asian literary scene”, according to news wire services. In news reports and Internet chat-rooms, it has been suggested the new administration “hijacked” the prize.

There was more upset when Malaysia and Mongolia were initially omitted from the list of Asian countries from which Gordon’s administration said entries would be accepted. Another issue is that from the point of view of authors, the prize aimed to create publicity and blaze new networks for Asian authors, but the new administration appears weak on those fronts.

But the choice of expatriate administrators and judges remains the main sticking point. Many South Asian readers and writers found it particularly galling that the South Asian initiator of the prize was dropped, since that region has became legendary for its talent in English literature. “Colonialism is so yesterday,” a commentator said on a literary website managed by Indians. As if to prove the point, almost two-thirds of the entries for this year’s prize were from South Asia.

Amusingly, Vittachi’s supporters have set up a website, , to provide more interactivity than exists on the official site. The independent site “designed to felicitate the awarded” certainly has a more Asian feel to it.

QUALITY THE CONCERN

Prize spokeswoman Rosemary Sayer, an Australian living in Hong Kong, told the press earlier this year that she saw no problems with the judges being from outside Asia, arguing that quality was the main concern. “Why should Asian people judge Asian writers?” she told an interviewer from Radio Television Hong Kong. Concerns about the propriety of Westerners judging the prize were “distasteful”, she said. “I’'ve lived here for nearly 12 years. I’m a permanent resident. Am I not Asian?” The interviewer chose not to respond to that question. More recently, Ms Sayer has declined to answer further questions about the prize.

Meanwhile, Vittachi insists he is not bitter about what happened, although his voice occasionally becomes strident, implying that the opposite is true. He repeats the names of the shortlisted candidates like a mantra – Nu Nu Yi Inwa, Reeti Gadekar, Jiang Rong, Jose Dalisay Jr and his old colleague Xu Xi – and says the focus of attention should be on them, not the administrative problems (although he has called for Asians to take top spots in the administration and judging next year).

“ My joy at seeing my dream come true for these fellow writers far outweighs my disappointment at being banned from the party,” he said, adding with a somewhat tired smile: “It’s amazing what a person can achieve if he doesn'’t mind who takes the credit.”

I know that this is ground this blog has covered before, but the discussion is certainly a relevant one for us, as this is an award Malaysian authors (including those writing in languages other than English) are already aiming for. You have a vested interest in how this award is judged, so what do you guys think?

Personally, I do think Nury was quite right to highlight the issue, it clearly is ridiculous that a prize for Asians isn't judged by Asians, right? (Nury was also treated incredibly shabbily.)

But I also think Rosemary Sayer has a point ... c'mon how long do you actually have had to have lived in a place before you are accepted as being part of the same community?

Would the long-term lit loving mat sallehs such as meself and Robert Raymer be any less valid judges of a prize or editors for an anthology for not having been born here or having sort of pinky-white skin? How would we have to prove our Asianness credentials? (By eating samabal belachan or durian?)

Would we then begin to say that some Malaysians weren't terribly Asian anyway because they were educated in the west, or had lived much of their lives there, or had grown up reading Enid Blyton?

Asian is such a bloody wide term anyway! Does someone from Pakistan, say, have a deeper insight into the fiction of China than a reader from Australia, Canada or Britain?

Face it, we live in a mixed-up muddled-up world where many of us belong culturally in more than one spot on planet earth.

Good literature should be judged as good literature by any judge from anywhere.

Do Malaysians Really Get Satire?

Satire ... [1] is a literary genre, chiefly literary and dramatic, in which human or individual vices, follies, abuses, or shortcomings are held up to censure by means of ridicule, derision, burlesque, irony, or other methods, sometimes with an intent to bring about improvement. [2] It is used in graphic arts and performing arts as well. ... Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, the purpose of satire is not primarily humour but criticism of an event, an individual or a group in a clever manner.

from Wikipedia.

Does satire flourish in Asia?

One of the most entertaining panel discussions of the Ubud Writer's and Readers' festival debated the question. Besides our own Kam Raslan, we met Sri Lankan author Manuka Wijesinghe who writes beautifully about the absurd in her novel Monsoons and Potholes, and Indonesian Isman Hidayat Suryaman who talked about how he hides his criticism of authority in humour since he cannot do it openly. He added a nice detail for us, Indonesia doesn't have a "censorship board" it has an "enlightenment board!" which does the same job! The session was moderated by Nury (who gets everywhere!).

Kam talked about how satire has become increasingly popular in Malaysia, and he read from Amir Muhammad's book to illustrate the fact that in Malaysia actually satirists are not needed because politicians do the job beautifully for them!:

Our job is to mock authority and our politicians make it too easy ...

he said, talking about how the politicians provide most of the material for KL's Instant Cafe Theatre for which Kam also writes skits.

When it came to question time I asked the panelists if they felt that their audiences really get their satire? As Instant Cafe founder Jo Kukathas (who was in the audience*) pointed out, of course Malaysian audiences understand satire ... otherwise why would their own company have been so successful?

I was actually thinking about satire on the page, particularly when it doesn't have a box around it saying "This is meant to be funny". And I was thinking specifically about this post on Amir Muhammad's blog on a spoof column he wrote as Ambi Mohan for the New Straits Times - the reactions from angry readers who didn't understand that their leg was being pulled actually makes funnier reading than the articles themselves!

Jo actually took me to task about the question I'd asked a couple of nights later, at the party at Blanco's house, and gave me plenty of examples of her own to support her argument. Somehow (might have been on my part the wine) we managed to entangle the question of "Do Malaysians get satire?" with "Do Malaysians get irony?" (which is a somewhat separate one, but nevertheless worth considering ... and I would say much of Kam's humour is gently ironic.)

On satire, with censorship so tight, and self-censorship added to it, there really is little tradition of making fun of authority figures here by means of the written word ... although happily the blogosphere is becoming increasingly good at using satire, much to the discomfort of politicians.

(It's worth noting too is that Kam's deliciously satirical sense of humour was shaped by TV programmes like Monty Python, as he grew up in the UK.)

My question then, is there a tradition of satire here, particularly on the printed page?

The issue is still knocking round in my own head. Would love your views.

(Incidentally, Isman has a very amusing blog calld The Fool Has Landed and wrote this session up very well himself. And Deepika writes a lovely piece on Manuka.)

*Now can you guess who the obnoxious politician was?

Developing Asian Literature

The Stars Rise in the East panel discussion. (From left) Nury Vittachi (moderator) Xu XI, Nicholas Jose and Madeleine Thien considered what kind of animal Asian Writing is, whether writers find the label useful, and where and how it's best for Asian writers to get published.

I was so pleased to finally meet Xu Xi because I chose one of her stories for the Collateral Damage anthology and we exchanged e-mails at the time. (Had I known what an impressive track record of publications she has, I think I would have held back from suggesting "improvements" to her story! Haha.)

Immediately after the session there was a launch party for a new regional support network: the Asia Pacific New Writing Partnership, which sounds incredibly exciting and is surely something that can be used to help our own writing community here grow. (Please do check it out here, and on the Sydney Morning Herald's blog.) I later had a chat to (Asia Pacific) Executive Director, Jane Camens and we exchanged contacts. I really hope something comes of it - funding, events, courses.

Asia was also the topic of another panel the following day, not surprisingly, with Korean author Lee Hye Kyung, Singapore's Catherine Lim, and Indonesia's Deborah Yatim. The women shared what had influenced their writing.

I had read some of Catherine Lim's short stories and very much enjoyed them. Nothing though had prepared me for what a lively woman she is. The stories just spill out, and they're all fascinating. (I hope they get written!) I invited her up to KL to do a reading and she said she'd love to come, but she doesn't read, she only wants to talk to her audience!

Next time someone asks me who my ideal dinner party guest would be - i think I'll choose Catherine!

Amorous Liaison on a Table Top

Why is it that I always manage to miss the most exciting moments at a literary festival?

This - I kid you not - is a photo from the final panel discussion of the Ubud Writers' and Readers' festival at the Left Bank Lounge, and captures the (increasingly) controversial Nury Vittachi in a compromising position atop the coffee table with Indonesian journalist (and ... ahem ... "feminist") Julia Suryakusuma.

Shameless behaviour or a very funny statement on the snoredom levels of mic-huggers who won't stop talking?

Deepika Shetty was the moderator for the session and appeared pretty shell-shocked afterwards. (I'm sure she'll be blogging her version.) Another friend who was there, declared the impromptu show as "utterly tasteless".

You can read the article from the South China Morning Post in full on Nury's blog. (Thanks too to Andy, who penned the story, for e-mailing me a copy).

Postscript:

Here's Deepika's take on it.

Crime Does Pay!

Another panel discussion I enjoyed very much at the recent Ubud Writers' and Readers' Festival was the one on crime fiction which featured Marele Day, Kathy Reichs, and Nury Vittachi.

Marele Day, the author of four award-winning crime novels featuring the first Australian PI, Claudia Valentine, says we enjoy reading crime fiction because it enables us to travel to places we wouldn't normally venture into and we feel comforted while we read about danger.

With crime, she says, there's also the pleasure of the narrative. It has a well constructed plot, the stakes are high for the characters and we have characters we care about. The author plays with what we expect, and we like to be teased. She actually reckons it wouldn't be at all a bad thing for all writers to try a crime novel to hone their skills!

It was the she says that the story telling aspect, she says, that drew her to crime fiction in the first place, and she decided to set the novels in the part of Sydney where she lived and to write in the noire style she liked in the work of other crime writers.

Nury Vittachi reckons that science has tried to murder the detective novel and the fun part of solving crime has disappeared into the laboratory. (Which is true really, if you think about it!) So he is making a conscious attempt to put back the fun element in his crime novels. The protagonist of his five novels is feng-shui master C.F. Wong.

When crimes are committed in Hong Kong, the feng shui master is sent for to find out why the balance of harmony is out of kilter. What would happen, Nury found himself wondering, if the feng-shui master was faster than the detective?

Most crime fiction has a western setting, he says, and he wanted to spread the message about a new world by setting his fiction in Asia. One of the underlying themes of the books is the problems that east and west have in communicating with each other, and he plays on the use of English to illustrate this. But, the message is, if they do learn to understand each other, they can solve the world's problems.

Kathy Reichs is a professor of forensic anthropology, and took to writing crime fiction to earn a little side money! She draws on real life cases for her material, and the main character of her novels is Temperance Brennan who is like Reichs herself, a forensic anthropologist. (Temperance works in the lab at night and writes about a character called Kathy Reichs in the daytime!).

Reichs is also an adviser for the Fox TV series, Bones, and says she helps them to keep the science honest. (She has a friend who is adviser for Silent Witness, my favourite TV programme.)

(Nury has a great blog post on having lunch with Kathy Reichs.)

I'm actually wondering why I am so sniffy about crime fiction on the page, but love it on the telly. After this session, that might be set to change!

Ubud Festival's Gala Opening

There are so many photos that I want to share with you and so much to write about the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival so patience while I gradually put stuff up.

Where best to begin but at the beginning:


The Gala Festival Opening was held in the spectacular setting of the Ubud Palace and was opened by Indonesian Tourism and Culture Minister Jero Wacik who gave a beautifully appropriate speech about how the festival was aimed at bridging different cultures around the world to create harmony.* (I must say it's the first time for ages I've heard a politician actually speak about the event he or she has been invited too rather than use the occasion as an opportunity for political grandstanding.)

Afterwards it was fun catching up with friends - many of whom I first met at the festival last year - and taking a few photos:

MPH editor Eric Forbes with literary livewire (ultra prolific author, necessary controversy stoker, blogger and all around great guy) Nury Vittachi.

Nury flanked by Sri Lankan author Manuka Wijesinghe (left) and Channel News Asia's Deepika Shetty.And here's Manuka, Deepika and myself with Ketut Suardana, the extremely supportive husband of festival director, Janet De Neefe.

(*You can read Trisha Setori's account of his speech in The Jakarta Post, though you have to take out a free subscription first.)

Twan on Booker Longlist!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just now I flipped to the Guardian website, saw the news and then just burst into tears.

The Booker Prize longlist was announced last night.

And Tan Twan Eng's Gift of Rain is on there!!!! (How many exclamation marks can I get away with? Remember, this is probably the world's most prestigious literary prize.)

I'm so very happy for him. So very proud of him.

Happy for all of us too and feel like trotting out again that old saw - Malaysia Boleh!!!

Before I get too carried away and glurgacious, Sarah Crowne refers to this year's longlist as being "low-key" with:

... four first-time novelists and a near-total absence of literary stars

And there are only 13 titles this time rather than the 18-24 of previous years.

I am myself very surprised not to see Michael Ondaatje and Graham Swift on there. But McEwan makes it, and the other big name on the list is of course A.N. Wilson.

There is another author of course on the list with a Malaysian connection - Peter Ho Davies who has a Malaysian mum!

Here's the longlist in full:

• Darkmans by Nicola Barker (Fourth Estate)
• Self Help by Edward Docx (Picador)
• The Gift Of Rain by Tan Twan Eng (Myrmidon)
• The Gathering by Anne Enright (Jonathan Cape)
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid (Hamish Hamilton)
• The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies (Sceptre)
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones (John Murray)
• Gifted by Nikita Lalwani (Viking)
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan, (Jonathan Cape)
• What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (Tindal Street)
• Consolation by Michael Redhill (William Heinemann)
• Animal's People by Indra Sinha (Simon & Schuster)
• Winnie & Wolf by AN Wilson (Hutchinson)

More about this later.

(By the way, sorry I'm a bit of a dozy blogger at the moment, and posting erratically. I've got a lot of work on and am enjoying it, but have less free time than before. Nevertheless, will do my best.)

Update:

I like what Deepika wrote. And Asian Literary Review editor, Nury Vittachi, confesses to being "blown away" by one of Twan's short stories ...

Reading List for Politicians

Think a certain politician is ignorant? Want to make a protest? Provide a reading list or better still send them a book or two!

Kam Raslan told me in an e-mail that he was much tickled reading about how Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul gave front-runner Rudy Giuliani a reading assignment, suggesting a list of foreign-policy books to back up his contention that attacks by Islamic militants are fueled by the U.S. presence in the Middle East.

Kam goes on to say:

And I thought, what about reading lists for people who want to do something or other? There's a great book called A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Horne about the Algerian war of independence from the French in the 1950s. The author sent a copy to Rumsfeld and was politely told to sod off. Bush apparently read the book and then drew completely the wrong conclusions. Oh well.

The book protest story I like best though is this one I came across on Nury Vittachi's blog:

Our old friend Yann Martel has started the world's smallest book club - one member. He's sending a book he likes to the Prime Minister of Canada every two weeks, to encourage more funding of the arts.

Booker prize winner Martel vows to send Stephen Harper an inscribed book every two weeks accompanied by a letter. So far there have been four books and four letters which you can read here. There is as yet no response from Harper saying how he has enjoyed Martel's choices, which range from Tolstoy to Agatha Christie.

All this of course begs the question, which books would you like to send to which politician? (Home-grown or international?)

Asian Judges for Asian Prize?

Yesterdays' Star Two carried an article from the Straits Times by Stephanie Yap about the current controversy raging over the Man Asian Literary Prize which began when Nury Vittachi accused the organisers of racial insensitivity .

At the heart of the current controversy over the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize is just how “Asian” its judging panel should be.

According to the chairman of the new prize, Peter Gordon, it should be about rewarding good writing, and the races and nationalities of its judges are irrelevant.

“Asian is a geographical description, and I don’t think one wants to read any more significance into it than that. Do you need to be Russian to appreciate Dostoevsky?”

The Hong Kong-based publisher was in Singapore recently to put out a call for submissions for the inaugural award. He is director of the Hong Kong Literary Festival, which is organising the US$10,000 (RM36,000) Man Asian prize. It is sponsored by hedge fund manager Man Group, which also presents the prestigious Man Booker Prize.

The three judges for the Asian prize, all writers, are: André Aciman, an Egyptian based in New York; Adrienne Clarkson, a Chinese Canadian; and Nicholas José, a Eurasian Australian who has lived in China and is fluent in Mandarin.

But popular Hong Kong writer Nury Vittachi says the panel did not truly reflect voices from Asia.

”They are Western Asians, not Asian authors in Asia. Some of them look Asian, but that’s not the point. To have a truly international panel, you need Asians as well as Westerners.”

Who do you think is right? Should an Asian prize be judged by Asian judges?

Update:

I'm really grateful to Ron for pointing me in the direction of this post on Literary Saloon which tosses all the questions up in the air and then adds a few of its own. It also takes issue with the definition of "Asia" in the competitions rules awarding the organisers an F for Geography.

Racism at the Hong Kong Litfest?

Shock news (passed on to me by Deepika): novelist Nury Vittachi, the co-founder of the Hong Kong Literary Festival is to be sacked by the organization’s board in a row about racial insensitivity and improper business links.

He claims:

* That he campaigned for years to set up a literary prize, but once sponsorship was obtained, he was cut from the project because of a Westerners-only rule.
* That the festival board, ostensibly non-profit, limits membership to directors and authors of Paddyfield.com and Chameleon Press, companies run by board member Peter Gordon.
* That prime slots in the festival programme were given to Chameleon Press novelists even if they paid for their own publication.

The article (reproduced in full on Nury's blog, source not given) concludes:

While Vittachi’s claims of racism may initially seem hard to swallow given that two of the men on the festival board have Asian partners, yet it is difficult to escape the conclusion that there has been, at the very least, racial insensitivity and a blur between business and festival matters. There is little doubt that Vittachi was one of the key progenitors of the Man Asia Literary Prize. To cut him out after he changed publishers was a move that had to raise eyebrows in the industry. As an extremely well-connected Asian author whose career is in the ascendancy, he would have been an ideal figurehead. In 2007 Vittachi is scheduled to be a featured author at festivals in Germany, Australia and the UK. Furthermore, with a chairman and judges from North America and Australia, the Asian literary prize now feels uncomfortably non-Asian. Without Vittachi, there is no involvement whatsoever from south Asia, the widely acknowledged home of Asian genius in English literature. ... Whatever happens, festival-watchers say the row is likely to force the board to institute the major reforms its outgoing founder recommended. It appears obvious that the group would benefit from having other Asian publishers and bookshops involved, and it will eventually have to open itself up to new members--and preferably Asian ones.

Am extremely sad, for Nury, whom I met at the Ubud Readers' and Writers' Festival.

Related Posts:

New Prize for Asian Writers! (18/11/06)
Man Asian Literary Prize (1/11/06)

Sri Lanka's First Literary Festival

Sri Lanka's first international literary festival is to be held in the historic southern seaside town of Galle, 11-14th January 2007. The exciting line up includes:

William Dalrymple, world renowned ex BBC correspondent & author Sir Mark Tully, Arthur C Clarke, distinguished biographer Victoria Glendinning, Sri Lankan authors Yasmine Gooneratne & Romesh Gunusekera, Christopher Kremmer, Suketu Mehta, Madhur Jaffrey, Nury Vittachi, Deepika Shetty, Elmo Jayawardena and a list of Sri Lankan authors who have won Michael Ondaatje’s Gratiaen Prize over the past years.

The festival will also honour one of Sri Lanka's most renown authors Nihal de Silva who was killed this year in a landmine explosion. (I hadn't heard of him before, but anyone who writes and loves birdwatching is close to my heart - right, Glenda?)

Organiser Libby Southwell sent me a press release which I'm happy to pass on, and will let you know more news when I have it.

I'd love to go to this. (Imagine meeting Arthur C. Clarke!) But I just looked at the airfare on MAS. I'd have to write an awful lot of articles to cover that.