Pitched as the Asian sister of the Man Booker Prize, which accepts candidates from Britain, Ireland and the Commonwealth, the Man Asian considers writers from 27 countries and territories across the continent.

Readers have long been indulged with unchallenging formulas and stereotypes about Asia and Asians, and David Parker, chairman of the Man Asian board, reckons it is high time those prejudices are retired.

'By promoting [Asian writing internationally], we are giving people around the world the chance to have a richer sense of what Asia is,' he says. 'There is consciousness-raising and education going on when people read.'

In a post-crisis economy marked by rising Eastern powers, it is perhaps more important than ever to build empathy and understanding between cultures.

'Asia is too often known through a distorting lens of exoticist and, sometimes, racist stereotypes,' Parker says. 'Until you read the contemporary literature [from the region], you cannot understand the complex consciousness of the people who live and work here.'

This year's five shortlisted authors represent three major cultures: China, India and Japan. Parker claims it is the strongest line-up yet - an outcome assured by a change in approach to this year's award cycle.

The Man Asian now demands the submission of works already published in English. Originally, the prize was for unpublished novels or new translations.

'The change this year is to enfranchise readers,' Parker says. 'We want people to be able to go into bookstores in Singapore, Mumbai, Tokyo and Hong Kong and find the books alongside each other. It allows people to think, compare and participate in the prize.'

Fifty-four books were reduced to a longlist of 10 last December, from which the shortlist was chosen. Ali says the novels were judged 'purely on literary excellence'.

She acknowledges translators, who make the prize possible, calling them the 'unsung heroes' and praising their craft as 'another whole area of creativity'. Asked what makes exceptional fiction, Ali says: 'As a reader, I'm not only looking to be informed but also to be touched and moved by the experience in some way. I'm looking for a writer to delve into the question that all literature addresses, which is 'what is the nature of the human experience?' and to do so in language that is beautifully honed.'

The 2010 Man Asian winner will receive US$30,000. Its translator, if any, will receive US$5,000. Here are the finalists.

Manu Joseph, Serious Men (HarperCollins)

This is a funny, uncommon and intelligent story about Ayaan Mani, who works at the Institute of Theory and Research in Mumbai. He is a Dalit assistant to astronomer Arvind Acahrya, a lordly Brahmin who is brilliant and mad.

The scientist believes aliens have been falling to earth as microbes, and his quest to prove it threatens personal and academic disgrace.

Mani lives in a slum. His son, Adi, is deaf in one ear and Oja, his wife, is exhausted and sad. Vengeful of a caste system that denies him better, heartbroken at watching his family suffer and bored of the days' dim repetition, Mani weaves a special myth around his boy.

The story is adroitly paced, while the prose is spirited and well-measured. It is a satire of science and class, and a comment on genius, sexual politics and love.

Joseph has been a journalist for 14 years. This is his first novel.

Yoko Ogawa, Hotel Iris (Macmillan)

This is a ghastly story rendered in clean, controlled prose with an effortless translation by Stephen Snyder. In the middle of the night at the Hotel Iris, a prostitute bursts out of room 202 shrieking.

So the author begins.

At times, Ogawa's narrative nudges the border of horror, though it doesn't concede to that genre's vulgarity. Even at the height of its violence, the novel maintains a suggestion of grace.

The dark love story between a teenage girl and an older man has a calm momentum that makes it all the more menacing - in the same way that frenzied killers are less frightening than those who murder with stealth and a smile.

The set pieces of this novel - the derelict hotel, a lonely island, stormy weather and the backdrop of a seaside town in the eerie, carnival throes of summer - could have made the plot obvious.

Instead, Hotel Iris is a poised meditation on desire, obsession and the edge between pleasure and pain.

Tabish Khair, The Thing about Thugs (HarperCollins)

This is a rich, gothic novel told in beautiful prose, using multiple voices across space and time.

An Indian thug named Amir Ali shares the story of his life with an English captain, William Meadows, as they travel from Bihar to Victorian London. Meadows' theory on the mutable nature of the thug challenges the work of Lord Batterstone, a phrenological scientist who holds that character is fated by the shape of the skull. Certain races are thought to be predisposed to violence as others are to reason.

Batterstone's mission to create the ultimate theatre of skulls turns grisly when he hires three thieves to collect heads from living people.

This is a story of crime and punishment, and a clever criticism of imperialist England. The pleated narrative is at once reminiscent of writing by Dickens, Conrad and Kipling and subversive of it.

Mythology and murder loom large as themes, as do language and the bond between fiction and truth.

Bi Feiyu, Three Sisters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

There is not much that is unfamiliar about Bi Feiyu's novel, which deals with the Cultural Revolution and its immediate aftermath through the eyes of three sisters from rural China.

Oppressed women abound, as do powerful, pathetic men. Inappropriate love, and the shame that follows it, are overarching themes. Childbirth, rape and suicide pierce through the narrative. Overall it is relentlessly depressing, if morbidly gripping.

The inherent floridity of Chinese, thanks to a reliance on idiomatic expression, translates reluctantly, and Bi's fondness for certain profanities is no doubt more jarring in English. However, this is a capable effort by translators Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Lin Li-chun.

Three Sisters has a refreshing start and flashes of insight. The sheer wretchedness of Mao's China always moves, the portrait of village life is stark, and the image of sexual confusion that blankets the nation is disturbing. It is an accomplished novel, but there is a sense that we have heard these stories before.

Kenzaburo Oe, The Changeling (Grove/Atlantic)

'There is only one truly serious philosophical problem,' wrote Albert Camus, 'and that is suicide.' This sentence, from the Myth of Sisyphus, could have inspired Oe's latest work.

The Changeling is a contemplative novel about Kogito Choko, a writer in his early 60s who travels to Berlin after his childhood friend and brother-in-law jumps to his death. The new translation by Deborah Boliver Boehm is clear but indelicate.

Before his suicide, Goro had sent Kogito a trunk full of cassette tapes, which he uses to communicate across the ineffable chasm between life and death. The brothers ponder, among other things, their youth, art, mortality and the soul.

The story is based on Oe's real-life friendship with filmmaker Juzo Itami. Oe won the Nobel literature prize in 1994, so it may seem unfair to place him in the running for the Man Asian. But to exclude this novel would undermine the integrity of a selection based on excellence.