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Annemarie Evans

Five authors were chosen last night for the shortlist of the  Man Asian Literary Prize.  
Contenders for the US$30,000 award include writers from Japan, China and India and among them are a first-time novelist and a Nobel Prize winner.
One of three judges, the best-selling author Monica Ali, announced the results via video-link from London. The shortlisted writers are: Bi Feiyu, who lives in Nanjing,  Jiangsu  province, for Three Sisters; Manu Joseph for Serious Men; Tabish Khair for The Thing About Thugs; Kenzaburo Oe for The Changeling; and Yoko Ogawa for Hotel Iris.
The winner will be announced on March 17.  
 Ali said the importance of the books as historical or political works had been put to one side.
'We judged in the end purely on literary excellence, that was the only criterion we used,' she added.
 Ali, the English-Bangladeshi author of the novel Brick Lane, which was made into a film, said  she and fellow judges Homi K. Bhabha and Hsu-Ming Teo had had lively discussions about their choices.
 But as they lived on three continents, she joked, there had been no physical violence. 
 Oe was the recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature and is one of Japan's leading post-war writers, while  Joseph, the deputy editor and Mumbai bureau chief of OPEN Magazine,  is in the running with his  first novel. 
Professor David Parker, the chairman of the board of directors of the prize, said as the rules had changed for this latest  Man Asian award to permit only published novels to make the list,  readers across the continent would be able to read and compare the shortlisted novels. 
 In previous years, it had taken as long as two years before  readers could find the shortlisted novels in bookshops, Parker said.  
 He added that the board  were considering introducing a smaller prize in the future for non-published writers. A total of 54 works from across Asia were submitted this year. These were filtered down to the final 10 in December.



Top literary contest nears denouement as final five announced