HONG KONG – Like David versus Goliath, first-time novelist Manu Joseph appears with Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe and three others on the latest shortlist for the Man Asian Literary Prize. The list contains writers from Japan, China and India.

The books contending for this year's prize are:
-- Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu;
-- Serious Men by Manu Joseph;
-- The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair;
-- The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe; and
-- Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa.

Professor David Parker, chairman of the award's board of directors, said, “Our judges have chosen five very different novels, each in its own way brilliant and captivating. Readers can enjoy and compare the high, distinctive accomplishments of novelists across Asia.”

The prize, carrying a cash award of US$30,000, began in 2007. This time, 54 works from across Asia were submitted. The winner will be announced on March 17, a day after the five authors appear at the Hong Kong Literary Festival.

Bi Feiyu ranks among China's most-respected authors and screenwriters. Born in 1964 in Jiangsu Province, he's a journalist, poet and novelist who previously won the Lu Xun Literary Prize. His acclaimed first novel was Moon Opera. He begins Three Sisters with the birth of the Wang family's eighth child, a long-sought boy. But the main characters are three of Little Eight's sisters. From petty village treachery to Cultural Revolution slogans and the harried pace of city life, they battle an ocean of people in a China not truly belonging to them.

Manu Joseph is a deputy-editor and Mumbai bureau-chief for OPEN Magazine. Previously he worked for The Times of India. After 14 years as a journalist, he presents Serious Men as a debut novel. His character Ayyan Mani works in the Institute of Theory and Research as a lowly personal assistant to a brilliant, insufferable astronomer. Although stranded in the Mumbai slums, Mani observes astutely and eavesdrops slyly. Partly for amusement, he weaves an outrageous fiction about his son that interests his superiors and may trigger disastrous events.

Tabish Khair, an acclaimed Indian poet and novelist, had recent novels short-listed for the Encore Award (U.K.) and the Crossword Prize (India). In The Thing About Thugs, Amir Ali leaves his village in Bihar, going to London with English captain William Meadows to whom he narrates his life story, that of a murderous thug. Then a group of Englishmen tries to prove the inherent difference between races by examining their skulls – with bizarre results. Set in Victorian London, it's a story of different voices from different places.

Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature, ranks among Japan's leading post-war writers. He published his first novel, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids, as an undergraduate at Tokyo University and since has been a prolific, revered novelist and essayist. In The Changeling, Kogito, an aging writer, receives a mysterious package from an old friend that contains tapes with recorded reflections about their relationship. Then Kogito learns that his friend has jumped to his death, but the man's voice continues to speak, promising to stay in touch from “the Other Side”. Kogito listens and searches to understand what caused the suicide.

Since 1988, Yoko Ogawa has published more than 20 works of fiction and nonfiction, winning major Japanese literary awards. Hotel Iris tells of a crumbling sea-side hotel where quiet, 17-year-old Mari works at the front desk as her mother tends to the off-season customers. One night they expel a middle-aged man and a prostitute from a room, and Mari becomes drawn to the man's voice, starting a long seduction. Despite provincial surroundings, Mari is a sophisticated observer of human desires.

Readers not yet familiar with these books have five good reasons for eager anticipation. Why not start turning pages?

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