Man Asian book prize longlist unveiled after record entries
Longlist of 15 includes Hong Kong-educated Jeet Thayil and other authors from Turkey to Japan
[Reporter Stephen Quinn speaks with Professor David Parker, director of the Man Asian Literary Prize.]
Fifteen novels were longlisted last night for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize, among them a Nobel laureate's work, as organisers announced a record 108 entries in the annual event.
The books feature authors from Turkey to Japan and also, under new rules, Asian writers who have lost their nationality through state action. The Hong Kong-educated Indian writer Jeet Thayil is in the race with his first novel, Narcopolis, a tale of opium dens in 1970s Mumbai.
Three of the contenders are debut novelists and seven books are English translations of their original works, including Northern Girls, in which mainland Chinese author Sheng Keyi looks at the migration of rural workers to Shenzhen. Other topics covered in the novels include struggles with identity in the shadow of the Vietnam war, and the consequences of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution.
The chair of judges, Maya Jaggi, said: "The far-ranging stories on our longlist draw the reader into some beautiful and some gruelling landscapes: from the glaciers of northern Pakistan to the Saudi desert; from an affluent Istanbul seaside resort to a Bombay opium den, and to Montreal and Mexico."