The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2015 Longlist Announced

The US $50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, the most prestigious international literary award specifically focused on South Asian writing, is open to authors of any ethnicity or nationality as long as the writing is about South Asia and its people. It actively encourages writing in regional languages and translations - the prize money is equally shared between the author and the translator in case a translated entry wins.

The Prize is now in its fifth year and over the past half-decade it has helped present writing about the South Asian region to a global audience.  The last four years have had winners from three different countries in South Asia:  H.M. Naqvi from Pakistan (Homeboy, Harper Collins, India); Shehan Karunatilaka from Sri Lanka (Chinaman, Random House, India); Jeet Thayil from India (Narcopolis, Faber & Faber, London) and Cyrus Mistry from India (Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, Aleph India). Each of these winners has gone on to international success.   

Now, the longlist for the 2015 Prize has been announced in New Delhi.  The announcement was made by Keki N. Daruwalla, leading Indian writer and poet, and chair of the jury panel. Other members are: John Freeman, author, literary critic and former editor of Granta from the US; Maithree Wickramasinghe, a Professor of English at the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka and at the University of Sussex, UK, and an expert on gender studies; Michael Worton, Emeritus Professor at University College London who has written extensively on modern literature and art; Razi Ahmed from Pakistan, the founding director of the Lahore Literary Festival. 

The longlist of 10 books showcases work the jury feels best represents the eclectic and vibrant voice of the South Asian region. It includes a mix of established writers and debut novelists, and spans authors from different backgrounds and geographies. It features authors originating from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan, some of whom are now based in USA, UK and Canada.

Keki N. Daruwalla said: “It has been both exhausting and rewarding going through the entries. As expected the variety was considerable. Obviously there was a tremendous mix here - of themes, landscapes, styles, issues, both political and personal. The narratives ranged from eighteenth and nineteenth century history to the Naxalite era in West Bengal, and from tribal rebellions to feudal atrocities. Scene and landscape varied from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal to Afghanistan. To give an idea of the variety, in one title a schizophrenic from Bihar imagines conversations with Sylvia Plath and Blake. In another soldiers returning from the Great War of 1914—1918 find life different in the North-West Frontier Province of what was then called British India. In yet another a Sri Lankan car driver on hire explores the past.”

At the announcement of the longlist Manhad Narula of the DSC Prize Steering Committee, said: “I am delighted that the DSC Prize has been able to highlight a range of issues pertaining to the ever evolving South Asian life - its culture, its people, and their new found aspirations. Given such a strong longlist, it will be interesting to see which books make it to the shortlist from here."

Indeed it will. The shortlist will be announced on 27th November in London. The winner will be declared at the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2015.

The Longlist

Bilal Tanweer: The Scatter Here is Too Great (Vintage Books / Random House, India)

Jaspreet Singh: Helium (Bloomsbury, India)

Jhumpa Lahiri: The Lowland (Vintage Books / Random House, India)

Kamila Shamsie: A God in Every Stone (Bloomsbury, India)

Khaled Hosseini:  And the Mountains Echoed (Bloomsbury, India)

Meena Kandasamy: The Gypsy Goddess (Fourth Estate / Harper Collins, India)

Omar Shahid Hamid: The Prisoner (Pan Books / Pan Macmillan, India) 

Romesh Gunesekera: Noontide Toll (Hamish Hamilton / Penguin, India)      

Rukmini Bhaya Nair: Mad Girl’s Love Song (Harper Collins, India)  

Shamsur Rahman Faruqi: The Mirror of Beauty (Penguin Books, India)

A Day In the Life Of… Harrison Kelly, Managing Director of Flatcap Asia

Harrison at the Jaipur Literature Festival

A Day In the Life Of...invites people involved in book selling and the publishing industry in Asia to describe a working day.

Flatcap Asia is a Hong Kong based arts and literary PR agency for Asia. The company works with a range of global clients from the creative industries including BBC World News, ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, Random House UK, Harper Collins, BAFTA, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the British Council. Harrison Kelly founded Flatcap Asia in 2010.

“I usually start my day around 7am. I have a bad habit of reading all my emails on my iPhone immediately when I wake up whilst still sat in bed. If it’s a particularly busy day this takes up valuable time as I usually have to re-read them all again in the office before I reply.

On Monday mornings I like to arrive at the office for around 8am. Flatcap is based in The Hive, a co-working space in Kennedy Town, just a short 10-minute commute from my apartment on Hollywood Road.

When I arrive at the office, I re-read all my emails and reply to most of them before 8.30am which is when Charlotte, Senior Consultant at Flatcap Asia, arrives. Charlotte and I will then discuss how the campaigns for several of our clients are going, and set out the priorities and tasks for the week ahead.

At the moment we are managing a title campaign in the East Asian press for Tim Clissold’s latest book Chinese Rules on behalf of Harper Collins. As the books pages in newspapers are increasingly being cut, it’s our job as a PR agency to get the book and the author out of the books pages and mentioned across other sections of the media where the author may find a new readership – in the opinion pages, or the lifestyle pages for example.

We often have to think of creative angles to get a journalist’s attention and interest in writing about a book – particularly if it is a fiction or literary fiction title, which is only published in English and isn’t set in Asia or by an Asian author.

Mid-morning, I usually have a conference call with one of our regional clients such as BBC Global News to catch up with their team and update them on the PR campaign. Although we specialise in literature, we represent clients from across the creative industries whether it’s TV, film, journalism, theatre or education.

When lunchtime arrives – often all too quickly – I tend to head into Central two or three times a week to catch up with a journalist, a sponsor or a client. Public relations really is an industry built on relationships, so it’s always good to meet up with colleagues for a good chat and a nice lunch deal – of which there are many in Hong Kong.

At 2pm, I usually have a call with the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival team in Delhi. Through Flatcap I consult as Head of PR for the Festival, which is the world’s largest free literary festival welcoming 250,000 guests, 800 media and 250 authors over five days. It really is a huge logistical feat. My role is to set strategy and direction for the traditional and social media campaign of the Festival. I’m fortunate to have a brilliant team at Edelman India, another PR agency, that work on the ground in India handling the campaign on a day-to-day basis.

The rise of literary festivals in Asia is, in many ways, down to the huge success of Jaipur, which started with a handful of authors back in 2006. I actually began my literary PR career at the Hay Festival in the UK, before working at the Edinburgh International Book Festival right before I moved to Hong Kong. There is an indescribable magic in the air at literary festivals; it’s certainly an addictive energy for those five adrenaline-fuelled days in Jaipur each January. I am looking forward to visiting the Singapore Writers’ Festival later this month – but as a punter! – and seeing Naomi Wolf and Suchen Christine Lim, as well as browsing the Festival bookstore to discover the new contemporary voices of Singaporean literature.

Mid-afternoon I catch up with Jan and Louise who also work with me at Flatcap Asia. I don’t speak any other language except English, yet the company works on a daily basis in both Traditional and Simplified Chinese and so I am very fortunate to have great staff members who can execute this non-English language media activity on behalf of our clients.

Around 4pm, London begins to wake up and so when I see The Bookseller’s Morning Briefing ping into my inbox, I tend to take half an hour out to catch up on the latest trade news from the industry as well as having a look on Twitter to see what is driving the news agenda of the day.

Many in the publishing industry are nervous about the rise of e-books and the demise of print. Regardless of age, the data shows consumers still want print books. The key challenge for the industry is maintaining a workable revenue model which accounts for the changes in delivering published work to readers. I think it’s important to learn lessons from what happened to the music industry in the early 2000’s. Thought it’s hard to predict what publishing will look like in 12 months’ time, never mind in 12 years, I do think print will always maintain its place and be consumed alongside digital.  

In many ways, for marketers, the digital challenge creates an exciting opportunity as the traditional avenues of reaching an audience for a book are suddenly been disrupted (or complemented?) by other platforms, particularly social media, which allow readers to discover books, authors or genres they may never have come across in a bricks and mortar store.

Around 5pm, emails from our clients in the UK begin to come through and so I turn my attention to that. One client we work with a lot is BAFTA (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts). Since last year, BAFTA has been hosting a range of activities in Hong Kong, aiming to inspire the city’s next generation of aspiring film, TV and games professionals. It’s been great fun supporting them on the ground here in Hong Kong.

Towards the end of the day I tend to focus on more admin related activity. This can be boring things like sorting out my accounts or general business management, through to more fun stuff like pulling together coverage reports for our clients. I am working on two of these at the moment, one for StoryWorthyWeek, an annual storytelling festival in Hong Kong, and one for Susan Barker, the incredibly talented author of The Incarnations, which we recently represented. A coverage report gives the client an overview of the campaign to date as well as showing all the media coverage earned so far, as well as the reach and value of the coverage.

I usually leave the office on time at 7:30pm when I will head out for dinner with friends or head out to see a production by one of our theatre clients. There is a really strong English-language theatre scene in Hong Kong, and thanks to groups such as Liars’ League and Hong Kong Storytellers there is also a growing live literature scene too.”

Twitter: @HarrisonJKelly / @FlatcapAsia 

LEAP+

Asia Pacific Writers & Translators (APWT) has launched an online magazine, LEAP+ 

LEAP+ seeks to provide evaluations of creative writing programs, tips on writing and editing, information about literary translation and finding publishers, and listings of festivals, workshops, retreats and so on. 

Click here to see the first issue. 

Australian author Richard Flanagan wins Booker

Richard Flanagan has won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Narrow Road to the Deep North, published by Chatto & Windus.

The Tasmanian-born author is the third Australian to win the prize which, for the first time in its 46-year history, is now expanded to include entries from writers of all nationalities, writing originally in English and published in the UK. He joins an impressive literary canon of former winners including fellow Australians Thomas Kenneally (Schindler’s Ark, 1982) and Peter Carey (Oscar & Lucinda, 1988 and The True History of the Kelly Gang, 2001).

The Narrow Road to the Deep North centres on the experiences of surgeon Dorrigo Evans in a Japanese POW camp on the infamous Thailand-Burma railway.

Named after a book by the Japanese haiku poet Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North was described by the 2014 judges as: “a harrowing account of the cost of war to all who are caught up in it”. Questioning the meaning of heroism, the book explores what motivates acts of extreme cruelty and shows that perpetrators may be as much victims as those they abuse. Flanagan’s father, who died the day he finished The Narrow Road to the Deep North, was a survivor of the Burma Death Railway.

The novel bridges East and West, past and present, with a story of guilt and heroism that will be of interest throughout Asia, as well as in London, Sydney and New York.

This week in the Asian Review of Books

Asian Books Blog is not a review site.  If you want reviews, see the Asian Review of Books.  Here is a list of its newest reviews:

The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing by Mira Jacob reviewed by Jill Baker
To the Edge of the World: The Story of the Trans-Siberian Railway by Christian Wolmar reviewed by Peter Gordon
The Golden Lands: Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand & Vietnam by Vikram Lall reviewed by Jame DiBiasio

Villages in the City: South China’s Informal Settlements and Factory Towns of South China, edited by Stefan Al; Paris Reborn by Stephane Kirkland reviewed by Mark L. Clifford
Manan by Mohit Parikh reviewed by Mia Warren

Click here for an extract from  Desde Hong Kong: Poets in conversation with Octavio Paz.  

The October 2014 print edition of Asian Review of Books is now available. Click here for details. 

Internationalism at Frankfurt

Frankfurt crowds this year

The Frankfurt Book Fair, which has just closed,  is the international publishing industry’s biggest trade fair.This year it featured 7,300 exhibitors from more than 100 countries, around 280,000 visitors, and over 3,400 events.

Those who were there say this year has been notable for the sense that once-insular publishers are now crossing international boundaries as a matter of course.

“Book publishers are expanding the scope of their opportunities to the maximum. They are experimenting with content and technologies.” Said Juergen Boos, Director of the Fair. He added: "The world belongs to enterprising people. For publishers, this means having the courage to cross boundaries, perhaps even to relocate mentally to other countries or industries.” 

The rapid  internationalisation of the publishing business was particularly evident at the Business Club, where  around 3,000 visitors from more than 50 countries benefited from conferences, consultations and networking services. In more than 70 sessions, approximately 150 speakers examined the issues and trends of the international publishing and media industries. 

Meanwhile, almost 100 tech-based innovators from all around the world made use of the Hot Spot exhibition areas for digital innovation. Boos said: "After an initial moment of panic the publishing industry is now demonstrating an astonishing level of mental agility, in the face of digitisation.”

As for the content providers - the writers - Frankfurt Undercover brought together more than 20 international writers who met over a period of three days to address political issues. Danish author and initiator of the project, Janne Teller, said: “There is obviously a strong interest on the part of writers to share ideas among themselves, and to assume a more active role vis-à-vis society and politics.” Juergen Boos concurred, saying that: “exchanges between politics and literature can be fruitful. Perhaps the power of words and the power of politics should meet more often?”

Especially, it could be argued, in Asia. 

Were you at Frankfurt?  If so, please do share your experiences with the Blog.

Book Launches in Ubud / Alice Clark-Platts

The Ubud Writers & Readers Festival is a great place for writers from around Asia to launch their books.  Alice Clark-Platts reports on launches at this year’s Festival, which finished last week. 

The Singapore Writers’ Group (SWG) launched Rojak, its first anthology of short stories.  Rojak is Malay for an eclectic mix, and the anthology is a reflection of the myriad nationalities of the more than 550 members of the SWG, many of whom are expat, and their experiences of life both in Singapore, and in countries far away. 

Seven of the SWG authors travelled to Ubud to launch Rojak at the beautiful and evocative Café Rouge on the third day of the Festival. Comfy sofas, delicious mojitos and a glorious Bali sunset provided the backdrop for readings from the book and a question and answer session with the authors.

The hugely supportive audience was amazed to discover there is such a thriving literary scene in Singapore.

Australian Tim Brennan’s Lucky Rice was another notable launch. The book, illustrated by glorious photographs of Bali, is a fictitious account of one of the author’s conversation with a Balinese rice farmer. It deals with the quest for enlightenment, and transposes its philosophical ideas into an accessible and joyful conversation between East and West, inviting the reader to discover how nature whispers her wisdom to all who care to listen.

Lucky Rice was the winner of the Best eBook: 2014 eLit Awards (multi-media production).  The eLit Awards are a global awards program honouring the very best of English language digital publishing, they are administered by the same US-based company that runs the popular Independent Publisher of the Year awards

It is fantastic that the organisers of the Ubud Festival encourage launches by unknown local authors, bucking the trend for literary festivals to laud only celebrity and best-selling authors.

Further information  

Lucky Rice www.facebook.com/luckyricebook

Rojak  click here for the link to Amazon.