An unprecedented seven books were unveiled yesterday evening for the shortlist of the prestigious Man Asian Literary Prize 2011, after the judges said that the literary quality coming out of Asia was so good, they could not limit it to the usual five.
The chairwoman of the judges, the BBC special correspondent Razia Iqbal, announced the shortlist via video link from London, where a simultaneous ceremony was being held in tandem with Hong Kong, the home of the Man-sponsored prize.
She said the judges had been greatly impressed by the imaginative power of the stories now being written about rapidly changing life in worlds as diverse as the arid borderlands of Pakistan, the crowded cityscape of modern Seoul, and the opium factories of 19th century Canton.
'This power and diversity made it imperative for us to expand the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist beyond the usual five books,' Iqbal said.
The other two judges for this year's prize are Chang-rae Lee, a Pulitzer prize finalist and author of The Surrendered, and Vikas Swarup, author of Q&A, which was filmed as the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire.
The selected seven included three Indian authors: Amitav Ghosh, who has previously been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, for his book River of Smoke; Jahnavi Barua, for Rebirth; and Rahul Bhattacharya, for The Sly Company of People Who Care. The Chinese author this time was Yan Lianke, for Dream of Ding Village, set in Henan province, which looks at the blood-selling scandal, when unscrupulous buyers used unhygienic practices, resulting in an Aids epidemic in central China. The other three are the Pakistani Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon; the best-selling author Banana Yoshimoto, of Japan, with The Lake; and the South Korean Shin Kyung-sook's Please Look After Mom.
