(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.
