Man Asian Literary Prize

Bi Feiyu Wins Man Asian award

 

On Friday March 18, 2011, Bi Feiyu (shown above with his interpreter Martin Merz) won the 2010 title for his novel, Three Sisters.

Chapter one: Celebrating Asian stories

A brief history of the Man Asian Literary Prize and other book awards for writers in the region

(From left to right: Amit Chowdhury, Mother Teresa, Mohammad Yunus, Tarzie Vittachi)
* * * 
By Nury Vittachi 

WRITERS BASED IN ASIA—want to make it big? Prizes definitely help. And not just for novelists. Increasingly, film financing is determined on the basis of awards won. The day before writing this I just learned that one of my young students had won the right to co-direct a full-length feature film.

But what prizes are you eligible for? Which awards are worth winning? In this essay, we’ll start off just looking at international prizes for fiction. And we’ll start with a history lesson.

* * * 

The first literary awards in Asia were intended to be eastern Nobel Prizes.

In 1957, the Rockefeller Foundation launched a series of awards in Asia, modeled on the more famous Swedish prizes. The Magsaysay Award, named after an assassinated president in the Philippines, was, like the Nobel, a wide-ranging, multi-faceted award, with titles for writers, community workers, people promoting peace and so on.

But after an initial burst of publicity, the Magsaysay Award rarely made the headlines in the West. In those days, the international media was largely from Europe and North America and focused on those places (with a tiny number of honorable exceptions, such as the Far Eastern Economic Review). Today things are—well, not that different, and we don’t even have the Review any more.

But the Magsaysay was a good prize, nonetheless, and judges successfully identified some amazing people.

Among the early winners of the Magsaysay Award were (photos above):

• Mother Teresa, a nun in Calcutta;
• Amit Chowdhury, a journalist in India;
• Muhammad Yunus, a banker in Bangladesh and
• Tarzie Vittachi, a journalist in Sri Lanka.

The last of these was a bit distracted that year—his wife gave birth to a son just before he received the literature part of the prize in 1959. Yes, the baby was me.

The same year, a novel called Dr No was published in the UK, and it featured a surprise figure who would change the way literature would be graded for ever.

His name was Bond.

James Bond. 

Chapter two: Enter James Bond

LET'S FAST-FORWARD about 10 years to the late 1960s.

Two things happened in the world of literary awards, one very important, and one totally inconsequential. We'll start with the trivial one.

My father had vanished. This was nothing new. He was constantly disappearing.

But I was a small, inquisitive child, and found a silver scroll, like a giant napkin ring, in a box in his cupboard.

My mother told me it was a prize he got for writing a book. I knew about his book—an expose that got him into dreadful trouble, and led to us being more or less exiled from our home country for 20 years.

But the Magsaysay scroll showed me the other side of the story: a difficult-but-worthwhile piece of writing had been recognized and its author rewarded. It inspired me—not to be a writer, but to help writers in Asia.

* * *
The other event was important.

Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond novels, had suddenly made a pile of money.

After a quiet start in the 1950s, Bond had become wildly popular after John F. Kennedy had listed one of the British spy’s adventures in his list of ten best books—and of course there were the movies, starting with Dr No in 1962.

(Ian Fleming)

The trouble was the taxman.

Authors rarely made the big bucks that other entertainers made—and found it hard to hold on to the small earnings that they did accrue, thanks to the heavy taxation policies of the era.

Ian Fleming, playing golf with Jock Campbell, a businessman who ran a food empire called Booker-McConnell (which operated sugar plantations, a cash and carry chain store, and an upmarket supermarket chain called Budgens), complained bitterly about the inland revenue, which took up to 19 shillings of every pound, as accurately detailed in Taxman, a Beatles song of the time. (A pound was 20 shillings.)

Campbell offered a solution to his irritated golf buddy. Business people could get through tax loopholes which were not available to individuals.

To help Fleming, he started an “authors division” in his food empire. The accountants could then save a pile of money for Fleming. Other authors signed up, including Agatha Christie.

When I say this, it makes Campbell sound like rather a sharp, wily character, but that would not be accurate. Indeed, it could be said that the Booker company was considered horribly exploitative, especially of sugar workers in Guinea, until Campbell took over, and turned it into a much more benevolent organization.

He could be seen as an early “fair trade” pioneer. He liked to help people, and it was his good nature that prompted him to set up a new division for Fleming and other authors.

* * *
But the UK taxman was not so easily fooled.

He assumed that Booker-McConnell’s new division was purely a tax dodge, and demanded proof that this was a logical, legitimate area of diversification for a food company.

* * *
Campbell, looking for a highly visible to validate the new venture, admitted that it was an unusual diversification, but said that the authors’ division was a legitimate offbeat marketing venture to make the name of the food company better known among well-heeled customers.

Staff at Jonathan Cape, a publisher, suggested he take inspiration from the venerable Prix Goncourt, a French award which was then the best known literary prize in Europe. Thus was launched the Booker-McConnell Prize for fiction.

* * *
The first award was presented in 1969, and was considered a rather bookish (naturally) event of interest only to a small number of people who liked high-end literary fiction. It was of no interest to the media.

But it slowly and steadily spread in importance until it became globally famous, with the results being televised nationally in the UK, and published in newspapers around the world.

* * *
By the 1980s, the Booker Prize had become one of the three best known literary prizes in the world, the others being the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the Pulitzer Prize. “The Booker” was kept financed by the profitable food businesses, such as the Budgen supermarket chain.

By that stage, the present writer had moved from Sri Lanka, via Malaya, to London, and working as Chief Shelf Stacker at the Budgen supermarket on East Finchley High Road (above).

It was hard work for low pay, but my team and I got some satisfaction that our hard labor was directly supporting deserving authors. Yes, I am being ironic. It sucked.

Chapter three: Prizes that matter

(Yann Martel went from relative obscurity to being the most successful prize winner for years)
* * *

FAST-FORWARD ANOTHER ten years, to 1999.

Your humble narrator had moved back to Asia and was working in Hong Kong with a group of amazing people on projects to put some energy into the nascent literary scene in Asia.

There were scores of literary festivals around the world, hundreds of fiction magazines, and dozens of writers’ prizes—but almost nothing on this side of the world.

* * *
It drove me mad with frustration. I felt like the people in Horton Hears a Who who shout: “We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!”

In Asia, tiny journals appeared and disappeared, often after one issue.

Literary conferences were often academic, and got no press (and to be honest, usually deserved none, being utterly dull). 

The Magsaysay award and other prizes existed, but got little or no attention, even in Asia.

* * *
Our first attempts to start an Asian literary prize were shot down by people who told us that a major Asian award had been announced recently – the Kiriyama Prize, launched in 1996.

I investigated this. It was presented as an Asian literary prize, and certainly labeled as such in the media – but closer examination told a different story. It was organized and run from the United States.  And it was limited to books published in North America, so we only became eligible once our books had gone international.  

We had friendly relations with the Kiriyama people (one of them, Stephanie Lawyer, was an old friend of mine who had lived in Hong Kong), but it didn’t divert us from the need to have an Asian prize, organized by Asians, for Asian literature.

* * *
By that time, I was already involved with a great many literary prizes run by various organizations, including newspapers, the government broadcasting division RTHK, consulates and schools. (This taught me the importance of having a “winnowing team” who would read the entries and forward only the ones worth examining to the esteemed judges.)

So it was easy to take the first step, which was to speak to the organizers of the existing prizes to see if anyone was interested in expanding their prize to make it an award for Asia, rather than just Hong Kong.

The answer was no—from everyone. It didn’t make commercial sense for them.

* * *
We also spoke to individuals such as Mohan Mirchandani, a rags-to-riches entrepreneur who had made a small fortune with a chain of bookshops. I wanted the Booker name on the Asian prize, so we even talked about making it Bookazine’s Booka-Prize (ouch!).

Mirchandani said he was not ready to finance an Asian literary prize, but had another idea.

With his help, and after consultation from friends such as the author Xu Xi, we started a literary magazine, initially called Dimsum, which later became the Asia Literary Review.

 

It proved a fine vehicle for locating budding writers in English—and giving me practice at shuffling through large numbers of creative works, some more creative than others. 

One of the later editors, Chris Wood, used to joke that it was issued for many years “from Nury Vittachi’s bedroom”. I ran with his joke, although it was not really true. We had our own office in Jardine House in Hong Kong’s Central district, thanks to the generosity of Mirchandani.

* * *
We wanted the journal to be for Asian authors who wanted to cross over into the English language market, but also for people of any race with an interest in Asia, including English speakers.

The slogan that covered everyone was “for Asia-related writing as yet unpublished in English”. That enabled us to get new material from writers who worked in English, and translated material from authors who didn’t. 

I’d quickly learned the secret of success in setting up creative ventures in Asia – INCLUDE EVERYONE.

* * *
By that time, I was working with an Australian short story writer named Jane Camens, who had come up with a plan to launch a literary festival in Hong Kong, on the lines of the huge writers’ festivals of Australia.

It became an annual event after its 2001 launch.

We had a great team, including a PR woman, Rosemary Sayer, a couple who ran an online book business, Peter Gordon and Elaine Leung, and a poet, David McKirdy, and some wonderful staff who did the real work: they will be given the glory they deserve in a separate history, dedicated to the festival. One of the early participants was David Parker, a poet and academic.

Jane Camens was a fabulous, tenacious woman who taught me a million things, the most important of which was: Be wildly, wildly ambitious.

We tracked down the hottest literary authors in the world, including many who had won or been nominated for the Booker: Timothy Mo, Romesh Gunesakara, Maxine Hong Kingston, Thomas Kenneally, Hanif Kureishi, and others, and successfully got them to Hong Kong.

Talking to them convinced me more than ever that there were only a small number of prizes in the world that really mattered.

(Authors at the first Hong Kong International Literary Festival included Afred Yuson, left, and Timothy Mo, second left)

* * *
We also spotted authors on the way up, before they became super-famous.  When we invited Yann Martel to Hong Kong, he told us his total book sales of all volumes had been 2,000 copies. By the time he arrived, The Life of Pi was a bestselling sensation globally, and would soon be one of the bestselling Booker winners ever.

* * *
I spoke to many of them about our plan to launch and Asian Booker prize. We ditched the plan to launch the Booka Prize, and decided that nothing but the real thing would do. Could we get the people who sponsor the Booker Prize to do one for us? Having been infected by Jane's ambition, I thought it a possibility.

But disaster was about to strike from an unexpected direction—news leaked out that the venerable Booker Prize itself was close to death.

Chapter four: Top book prize in trouble

(John Carey is one of the most revered and longest-serving of the Man Booker Prize judges)

* * *
By 2002, there was an extraordinary piece of news in the book world. Booker-McConnell had run out of spare money and could no longer sponsor the Booker prize. Arrgh.

Conversely, by that same date, I was doing quite well as an author/ journalist/ speaker, and thought about sponsoring the Asian literary prize myself—but then realized that that I definitely did not want it to carry my own name. It would do much better with a big name.

* * *
Fortunately, the world's best-respected book prize was rescued. The Booker Foundation enlisted Man Group, an investment firm, to become title sponsor, and the prize became the Man Booker Prize.

We realized that the prize we fantasized about creating would thus become something like the Man Booker Asian Literary Prize, or Man Asian Literary Prize, names which were long and unwieldy, but had some grandeur to them. That would be just fine.

***

 (Amitav Ghosh)

At the 2002 festival I talked to Amitav Ghosh, who had some interesting things to say about prizes—and revealed that his publisher actually hid the fact that he had won major science fiction prizes, wanting to position him as a literary author.

Prizes define authors.

(Charles Foran)

Charles Foran, a Canadian author who became (and still is) one of my best friends, also gave me a lot of help and advice: he had been nominated for the Governor-General’s Award, a Canadian equivalent of the Booker Prize.

* * *
Then one day, Rosemary Sayer turned up at our monthly "lit fest" meeting with some amazing news. It seemed like the wildest version of our dream could take one step towards become a reality.

The Man Group (sponsor of the Man Booker Prize) was expanding in Asia, and her company was advising on marketing, right here in Hong Kong.

“Thank you, GOD,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” Peter Gordon joked.

* * *
In 2003, Man Group became a sponsor of the festival, which that year featured authors such as Shobhaa De and Liu Hong. Here was the chance of making it happen – a Booker Prize for Asia.

I made a beeline for Matt Dillon, the boss of Man’s Hong Kong operation. At cocktail party, I nearly choked on my lime-infused Thai crab cake when he told me that he had a passion for high-end Asian literature. “Wow, you mean there’s two of us?” I said. Despite the playful response, I was suspicious at first, and assumed he was joking or just being encouraging.

(Matt Dillon)                

But Matt, a tall, genial man, was deadly serious, telling me he had read several Japanese classics in their original Japanese!

We got on like a house on fire and Matt was politely receptive to the idea of having a prize for Asia. 

But after repeating the plea on several occasions, and making it crystal clear that I was serious about making it happen, not just having small talk, he was equally clear about his inability to deliver such a thing for us.

“Such a decision would not be made here,” he said.  He promised to have a word with his colleagues in Europe.

* * *
Matt and the Man Group turned out to be fabulous sponsors for the Hong Kong festival, just as the firm was a great sponsor for the Man Booker Prize.

(The original sponsors would regularly give the judges “suggestions”, such as “can we insist that the winning books all have happy endings?”. In contrast, the Man Group did no such thing, keeping a strictly hands-off approach, and increasing the prize money from 21,000 pounds to 50,000 pounds.)

But we were soon to learn that doors swinging open can just as suddenly swing shut.

Chapter five: The Booker people come to Asia

(Pankaj Mishra)
* * *
By the following year’s festival, in March 2004, I had done copious research on the Man Booker prize, and knew more about it than most writers anywhere on the planet, and probably most executives in the Man Group, even in London.

That spring, I spent a lot of time talking to top UK critic John Carey, who had been chair of the Booker Prize in 1982 (they choose Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark) and then the Man Booker Prize in 2003 (when they chose DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little).

Carey spoke at the Hong Kong festival along with a bright young Indian novelist, Pankaj Mishra. Also featured was a young British writer with a fetish for Japan, David Mitchell. Mitchell sent me a piece to put in our journal, and it was an extraordinary piece of work—I knew he would be a regular on the Man Booker shortlist.

(David Mitchell) 

* * *
Matt Dillon held true to his promise. He and Rosemary Sayer arranged a meeting at which I could meet some Man Group executives from London, with a specific purpose of discussing a potential Man Asian Literary Prize.

I backed up my usual spiel about the rising importance of Asian culture on the world stage with a barrage of facts about Man Group’s sponsorship of book prizes.

The rules for the Man Booker Prize, I pointed out, made it a very British / commonwealth prize which excluded most Asian authors. The Man Booker prize needed to be a prize for the world, I said.

“You already do a local prize in Africa. You already do a local prize in Russia. A similar local prize for Asia is the missing piece of your puzzle,” I told them.

One of the attendees, a man named Christophe, was particularly receptive. You can usually read people’s reactions in their eyes –and I knew that they had liked what we had said, and could see the logic of the argument.

I told Rosemary and my other team-members on the way out of the meeting that I felt we had a good chance of getting the go-ahead this time.

* * *
Shortly afterwards, the answer came. It was short, sharp, and clear: No.

The disappointing news was delivered in gentle tones, by Matt Dillon, but was nevertheless unequivocal. My argument that the Man Booker Prize needed to be a prize for the world had been heard, understood and agreed with—indeed, it turned out that exactly the same discussion had been going on for more than a year at the offices of the prize in London.

Yes, the Man Booker Prize did need to be a prize for the world. But the answer was not to launch an Asian prize, but a new prize that would be global.

Matt said that he was not at liberty to reveal details of the prize, except to say that it would be a prize without the limitations to entry that were specified in the rules of the Man Booker Prize.

* * *
I was crestfallen. I waited patiently for the announcement, and resisted the temptation to even hint at the coming surprise in my various newspaper and magazine columns.

Full details were eventually released in June. The Man Booker International Prize would be awarded every two years, and would be awarded to a living author anywhere on the planet whose work was available in English.

The words “Asian Literary Prize” disappeared from the agendas of the meetings of our team.

 

Chapter six: Celebrating Asian authors

(Right to left: Nury Vittachi, Su Tong and Bi Feiyu on tour in Europe)

* * *
But it never disappeared from my personal agenda.  

Oddly, rather than lessening my enthusiasm, the launch of the new prize gave me MORE encouragement for my pet project.

Chair of the judges was John Carey, and the shortlisted candidates were people of the class of Doris Lessing, a personal hero of mine. (You can read about the time I met her here.)

It quickly became obvious to me that the international prize did not in any way provide an incentive for new Asian writers, young Asian writers, or even moderately successful writers in Asia.

It was specifically for a body of work by a world-class author who had achieved seniority, a sort of "elder statesperson" qualification. It was for Ms Lessing and people of that stature.

It was certainly not for the authors who I was touring with, or sharing festival platforms with, or whose work was appearing in our journal, who were young and ambitious, and mostly still on their first few books: it was not for Tabish Khair, or Bi Feiyu, or Su Tong.

On a tour of France with two Chinese authors (see pic at the top of this post), I urged them to visit Hong Kong and get their works into English. Su Tong and Bi Feiyu were bright, talented authors, and I told them about our festival and our plans to introduce an Asian literary prize -- because I was still convinced that we needed one. 

But clearly Man Group was not going to be the sponsor. We needed someone else.

* * *
At that time, our activitie had had attracted some interest from a fascinating character. Wealthy investment banker Ilyas Khan, who would eventually become publisher of the Asia Literary Review, had revealed a deep interest in playing a role in the promotion of Asian  literature.

Could he be a potential sponsor of a prize?
***

 (Ilyas Khan)

* * *
At the same time, I was anxious to continue to grow our friendship with the Man Group.

One of the main events of the 2005 festival was an event featuring the reigning holder of the Man Booker Prize, Alan Hollinghurst, in conversation with yours truly.

Many Man Group executives and clients were in the front seats of the audience at the China Club in Hong Kong. So I took the opportunity to use the introduction to tell some funny tales about the history of the Man Booker Prize – including the Ian Fleming golfing story above.

Also, I praised the Man Group for not demanding happy endings, as the previous sponsors had done.
***

(Alan Hollinghurst)

* * *
After the festival, I continued my research on the structure of the Man Booker Prize, and looked at how it would need to be different for Asia.

As well as talking to top authors, I also talked to publishers. Most were of the opinion that a prize for Asia would have to be some sort of “new writers” prize, since there was simply too little top end literary fiction coming out of Asia. A prize for published literary Asian authors might only attract a few dozen entries. 

Indeed, there was relatively little publishing of any sort taking place that could successfully cross borders. Thousands of books were being published in China, India and Japan, but few would work internationally.

It was also clear that there needed to be special Asian elements for the prize. To take one example, original material published as ebooks, for example, was sneered at in the west, but I knew from my network of emerging authors that it was already a significant part of the fiction market in the east.

We needed a new concept that would draw in new authors and old ones, writers, readers and publishers. The answer came from a surprise location: Australia.

Chapter seven: A revised plan

(Kate Grenville rose to prominance after winning the Vogel with an unpublished manuscript)

* * *
At the end of 2005, I went on a book tour of Australia, and used the occasion to investigate prizes in that country – particularly the Miles Franklin and the Vogel awards.

I attended the awarding of the Australian/ Vogel Literary Award in Melbourne and ended up having a long discussion with Patrick Gallagher, the head of Allen and Unwin, about how to set up a prize in Asia—a prize that involved enough individuals, publishers and readers to be irresistible to a sponsor.

* * *
Patrick was an amazing man who had taken a UK publisher (the original publisher of JRR Tolkien’s work) and moved its headquarters to Australia.

The Vogel was for unpublished authors, yet was awarded on the day of publication, so there was something physical to buy in the bookshop. It launched the careers of many top authors, including Kate Grenville, Tim Winton, Brian Castro and Andrew McGahan.

* * *
What I found attractive was the way it brilliantly located new authors, and yet involved readers and publishers too: a physical book was created at high speed by Allen and Unwin in the short gap of two weeks between the judges' final decision and the announcement of the winner.

These were concepts that I realized we could use in Asia. All we needed to do was combine this idea with the guiding principle of our literary journal – open it up to all authors writing Asia-related material which was at yet unpublished in English.

(Brian Castro, Vogel winner) 

 * * *
In discussions at the event, I quizzed Patrick Gallagher and we nutted out the basic details for an Asian prize.

• The award would need to be home grown and yet international;
• it would have to be managed by people who knew the many quirks and vagaries of the Asian literary scene;
• for the sake of numbers, and to genuinely reach the Asian literati, it would need to involve new writers as well as more experienced ones;
• it would need to involve books that existed physically, issued by reputed, international publishers;
• it would need a lot of money (“work out the budget and then double it”);
• and it would need someone with a bottomless travel habit and great media contacts to promote it – that would be me.

* * *
“Okay, that’s the easy stuff. Now what’s the hard bit?” I said to Patrick.

He wished me luck.

But he thought it could work, since we already had a big advantage: our journal and our festival meant that we had a network of writers, publishers and readers.  

* * *
Flying back to Hong Kong, the way ahead was clear. We would use all the data, networks, contacts, and guiding principles from our Asian literary journal, and marry it to the data we’d gathered from researches into literary prizes, modeling it on the Vogel and the Man Booker prizes. Et voila—the result would be a prize grand enough to attract a big sponsor.
* * *
I arranged to meet Peter Gordon to run this idea past him. Peter was a dry, laconic individual who always greeted my “How’s life?” greetings with “Terrible”—but he had a genial side too. One of Peter’s specific jobs, which he did with relish and great skill, was to burst my bubbles, which is why I ran the revised idea for the prize past him first.

We met at the Zambra coffee shop in Wan Chai where I outlined the plan and explained how we would transfer the “unpublished in English” concept from the journal to the prize. I was gratified to see that he was as excited as I was.

 
(Peter Gordon)

* * *
The idea of launching an Asian literary prize immediately went back on the literary festival agenda, with Peter promising to write a “white paper” on it.  Rosemary was also excited, telling us that the Man Group board was due to meet in Hong Kong early in 2006.

* * *
I was excited, too, of course—but we were all aware that similar ideas had been rejected by Man before, over the previous three years. As the day drew near, many people told me not to raise my hopes again. But this time was different, I said.

First, they could not hold up the International prize as a reason to reject this proposal—I had clear arguments that the international prize had no overlaps with what we were planning.

Second, Matt Dillon, God bless him, had persuaded the board to give us a portion of their meeting – we would actually be facing the very top decision-makers themselves, without middlemen carrying our message.

They would hear the passion in our voices, and that was what would carry the day.

Chapter eight: Our last chance

(Li Bo and Jo Lusby, publishers of Wolf Totem)

* * *
I stayed up past midnight the night before rehearsing my pitch until I knew it by heart. 

The following day, we were ushered into a room in front of the board. Rosemary introduced us.

Soo Jung Hyun, festival manager, spoke about the school audiences and adult audiences we reached with our live events.

Then I spoke about the prize.  I was honest—I told them that their existing prizes could not be won by Asian authors, and a home-grown prize would have to be tailor-made for this region. Our authors were mostly young, and often unpublished in English.

“You guys are financiers, numbers people. You know that the easiest way to make money is by arbitrage.  You find an anomaly and sit on it until it fixes itself.”

I told them that we had located a huge anomaly. The bulk of the world’s population, more than 60 per cent, were Asian. But barely one per cent of the literature that made it to the world stage was Asian.

There’s your anomaly. Do the math!

* * *

The directors laughed, and I knew we were in (yes, over-confident as ever).

We left the room to allow the directors to make their decision in private.

Shortly afterwards, Matt emerged and spoke quietly to me over the lunch buffet. He told me that the answer was yes, although we would have to wait until a formal decision was announced before we could tell anyone.

* * *

On the way down in the lift, I told the others what Matt had told me, and suggested that we should head to a restaurant to celebrate.

But then I remembered that I had an appointment to go to a government primary school in Kowloon to do a “let’s make up stories” session.

From top-end literature to the bottom end—it’s all a continuum.

(Su Tong) 

* * *
The Man Asian Literary Prize was announced in the fall of 2006. Rosemary Sayer was the main speaker, and described the prize as the fulfillment of “a dream” that I had had for a long time.

* * *
In 2007, the Man Asian Literary Prize was awarded for the first time. People who were present in Asian literary circles at the time will remember that there were various political wranglings and mini-controversies, many of which made the newspapers.

But I am not going to focus on those. The game of politics is a tedious, life-sucking pastime, and it is even worse when warmed over with the gift of hindsight. "Include everyone" remains my motto, although others may choose to act differently. 

So allow me please to simply gloss over those troubles. Yes, there were some serious teething troubles in the early years of the prize. But I am quite sure that all of us involved in making the prize a reality, and let me highlight Peter Gordon and David Parker here—we were all sincere people genuinely working as hard as we could to do the right thing.

Each administrator had a somewhat different vision. My home-grown, Asian, include-everyone vision was drastically revised. So the first year, there was no one from Asia among the staff or judges. That changed from the second year onwards. The focus was on unpublished manuscripts the first few years, then switched to published books only. Budgets were tight the first few years, but more generous from 2010 onwards.

The first winner was Jiang Rong, a Chinese novelist who made a huge impact in China with Wolf Totem, a novel which drew parallels between the lives of wolf groups and the individuals who lived near them. The chairman of the judges was Nicholas Jose.

The second winner, in 2008, was Miguel Syjuco, for Illustrado. Miguel was a tiny, charming young man of Filipino extraction.

The third winner, in 2009, was Su Tong (scroll up for pic). 

This was particularly gratifying to me, as I had got to know him and Bi Feiyu on tour in France and had encouraged them both to work harder to get into the English market.

At that time, Yu had more books in French than in English. On my return from that European tour, I did some matchmaking, eventually putting Su (and his translator) in touch with Marysia Juszczakiewicz, a literary agent in Hong Kong.

While I had no hand in the book that resulted--all credit goes to Su—I did feel some pride in the 2009 result.

And the fourth winner, announced just as I finish writing this, is Bi Feiyu--the other person on that fateful trip across France... 

Chapter nine: Looking ahead

International Asian prizes have proliferated in recent years.

Here’s an update.

The Scholastic Asia Children’s Book Prize for Fiction was launched in 2010, with your humble narrator as chairman of the judges.

It is jointly run by the publisher and by the National Book Development Council of Singapore.

The first winner will be announced in May 2011.

If you want to write the first Asian Harry Potter, here's your chance.
* * *
* * *

The Kiriyama Prize was awarded from 1996 to 2008—and then disappeared for “restructuring”.

We’re all hoping that it will re-emerge with a new sense of purpose.
* * *
* * * 

(Your humble narrator announcing the winner in Perth, Australia)

The Asia-Australia Prize was a one-off award in 2008. I chaired the panel of judges.

It was a huge prize—at the time, worth US$100,000, more than the Man Booker and the Pulitzer put together.

But it was also the most innovative prize I have ever been involved with. If anyone is interested in really different, forward-looking awards, organized in a way that's ready for the future of Asia, write to me and we’ll talk.
* * *
* * *

The Magsaysay Award is still going strong, now 53 years old.

One of the family members involved in organizing it, Pico Magsaysay, approached me to talk about its positioning, and told me that there were hopes that it could get more attention. It certainly deserves it.

Pico and I met at Starbucks in Jardine House, Central Hong Kong--in a coffee shop built on the exact site of the former offices of Dimsum journal, which became the Asia Literary Review.

He congratulated me on getting the Man Asian Literary Prize up and running, and told me that the Magsaysay family were looking to promote their award. "Did you know that one of the first winners of the literary part of the prize was your father?" he said.

"Actually, I did," I replied. Fifty years later, the circle was completed.

*
Contact the author: nury@vittachi.com

Go to the author's website: www.mrjam.org

NOTE: The article above is not intended to be definitive or historical. It was written from memory. I'll probably do a more detailed one sometime using my diaries. If there is anything above that anyone wants to change, or add to, or delete, please feel free to write to me at the email address given. Or simply use this link to go to the letters page and get straight into print.