Newsflash: Tan Twan Eng makes Booker list

THRILLED TO REPORT that Tan Twan Eng is on the shortlist for the Man Booker prize, which was announced yesterday in London.
    Tan is a very fine writer of Malaysian origins. He sent a piece in for the Asia Literary Review recently and it blew me away -- head and shoulders above most of the other pieces I get from East Asian authors.
    The list this year is unusual -- few big name authors and four first-time names. The judges change regularly so the contests sometimes do have a different feeling to them,
    I was pleased (and not surprised) to see Mohsin Hamid in the list for his very fine new book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist.
    Click here to see the full list and comments by top Malaysian book blogger Sharon Bakar and click here to see the views of Singapore's Deepika Shetty.
    All this reinforces my argument that the world is in a receptive mood for new authors and new voices, particularly Eastern-tinged work. Get to work!