Adrienne Clarkson was an inspired choice to chair the jury for the first Man Asia Literary Prize.
She has a complicated Chinese-Australian-Hong Kong heritage and has been a book reviewer, author of romantic novels, award-winning literary commentator and broadcaster, publisher, and latterly governor-general of Canada.
The prize could introduce Asian authors to new readers all over the world, Clarkson says.
'This is a highly sophisticated prize, bringing as it does writing from different parts of Asia to an English-reading audience,' she says.
What impresses about the 68-year-old Clarkson are her forthright and clearly argued opinions about good writing; one can only imagine the 'lively discussions' in telephone conference calls and long chains of e-mail over the past five months between her and her fellow jurists, Egyptian-born New York author Andre Aciman and Australian novelist and former cultural attache to China Nicholas Jose.
'I think we came up with a shortlist all of us feel very happy about.'
