Author Bi Feiyu made it a hat-trick of wins for the mainland when he picked up the Man Asian Literary Prize in Hong Kong last night.
His novel Three Sisters, set during the Cultural Revolution, was the unanimous choice of the three judges. His victory means China has won three times in the top award's four-year history.
But after receiving the cash prize of US$30,000 at the Peninsula Hotel, Bi admitted he hadn't held out much hope of winning. Speaking through a translator, he joked that after his book entered the shortlist, his friends told him there was no way a Chinese writer would win for a third time.
'All my friends said, 'Don't even bother going to Hong Kong. There's no point.' But I had to show my son that if I'd entered a prize and didn't win, I'd still stand there and take it like a man,' he said.
Bi said perhaps the central reason he wrote Three Sisters was because 'we should never forget the Cultural Revolution at any time'. He said he did not want to see terror on people's faces, adding: 'I want to see joy on people's faces'.
Bi's book was one of 54 entries from 13 Asian countries. Translators Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin shared a prize of US$5,000.
The judges, British best-selling novelist Monica Ali, Homi K. Bhabha and Hsu-Ming Teo, described the novel as 'a moving exploration of Chinese family and village life during the Cultural Revolution'.
