Man Asian Literary Prize Longlist Announced

The 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize longlist was announced on Tuesday. The longlist nominees are:

– Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu
– Way to Go by Upamanyu Chatterjee
– Dahanu Road by Anosh Irani
– Serious Men by Manu Joseph
– The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair
– Tiger Hills by Sarita Mandanna
– The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe
– Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa
– Monkey-man by Usha K.R.
– Below the Crying Mountain by Criselda Yabes

The list includes 1994 Nobel Laureate Kenzaburo Oe and represents fiction writers from countries as disparate as India, China, the Philippines and Japan. This year’s judges are Monica Ali, Homi K. Bhabha and Hsu-Ming Teo. Finalists will be announced in February and the winner will be named in March at a ceremony in Hong Kong.

The Man Asian Literary Prize was founded in 2007. Awarded annually to an Asian writer, the Man Asian Literary Prize is given for the best novel either written in or translated into English.

Jose Saramago, Nobel Laureate, Dies

José Saramago, 87, the only Portuguese-language writer to have won the Nobel Prize, died Friday morning at his home in Spain. Saramago’s surreal and occasionally controversial books frequently placed ordinary people in radical situations and confrontations. According to The Washington Post, literary critic Harold Bloom denounced Saramago’s political views as those of “a Portuguese Stalinist” but honored him as the second-best writer in the world.

The Catholic Church greatly disapproved of his novel The Gospel of Jesus Christ, in which Jesus Christ is portrayed as a teenager with a strong libido. Following the church’s censorship of the book, Saramago entered self-exile in Spain for the remainder of his life.

Saramago’s novel Blindness was made into a 2008 film starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.