Gunter Grass Obituaries

Gunter Grass died yesterday.  Here are six of the many obituaries being published around the world.

The Guardian (UK)
The New York Times (USA)
Spiegel Online International (Germany, in English)
The Japan Times (Japan, in English)
Aljazeera (Qatar, in English)
The Hindu (India, in English)

Bailey's Women's Fiction Prize 2015 shortlist

Bad luck to PP Wong (The Life of a Banana) and to Xiaolu Gu (I Am China) who were both on the longlist for The Bailey's Women's Fiction Prize (formerly The Orange Prize), but who failed to make the shortlist, announced yesterday.

But great news that Kamila Shamsie (A God in Every Stone) and Laline Paull (The Bees) both made the cut.

The shortlist

Author	Title	Publisher	Nationality	Notes
Rachel Cusk	Outline	Faber/Vintage	British	8thNovel
Laline Paull	The Bees	Fourth Estate	British	1stNovel
Kamila Shamsie	A God in Every Stone	Bloomsbury	Pakistani/British	6thNovel
Ali Smith	How to be Both	Hamish Hamilton	British	6thNovel
Anne Tyler	A Spool of Blue Thread	Chatto & Windus	American	20thNovel
Sarah Waters	The Paying Guests	Virago	British	6thNovel

Q & A: Julianne Schultz / New Asia Now

Griffith Review is Australia’s leading literary quarterly. Each issue is themed. Recent editions have covered topics as varied as renewal after natural disaster (Surviving, edition 35), globalisation (Small World, edition 37), and migration within the Pacific, (Pacific Highways, edition 43).  Each themed collection features a mix of essays, memoir, reportage, short fiction, poetry and visual essays by emerging and established authors who tease out the complexities of the subjects and events under discussion.

Big Brother Mouse / Ann Bennett

Ann Bennett’s novel Bamboo Heart won the inaugural Asian Books Blog Book of The Lunar Year Award, for the Year of the Horse – click here for details.  Ann’s (ahem) prize was to write a guest blog about a charity dedicated to promoting literacy in Asia... 

My chosen charity is one you probably won’t have heard of. It is called Big Brother Mouse and is based in Luang Prabang in Laos. Before I stumbled across it I did a fair amount of internet surfing, and made enquiries of several friends with knowledge of the region. I discovered that there are many projects working on improving literacy in Asia, including UNESCO, and other well-known names such as Save the Children.

Best Translated Book Award 2015: two Chinese titles on the longlist

Congratulations to Dorothy Tse and translator Nicky Harman (Snow and Shadow),and to Can Xue and translator Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (The Last Lover), who have made it to the longlist for the Best Translated Book Award 2015. Click here for more information.

Keep an eye-out for a guest post from Nicky Harman, coming next week. 

This Week in 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 and round ups:

Poetry: Hula Hooping by Tammy Ho Lai-ming reviewed by Mani Rao
Outside reading: essays and articles on Russia and Asia, Middle Eastern and Indian literature, diversity selected by Peter Gordon
The Defections by Hannah Michell; The Vegetarian by Han Kang, translated from the Korean by Deborah Smith reviewed by John W. W. Zeiser
Preparation for the Next Life by Atticus Lish reviewed by Jill Baker
Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand Review round up

The Hindu Prize / Submissions

The Hindu Prize shines a light on the best Indian fiction in English every year. It is run by The Hindu newspaper, which now invites submissions from publishers for the 2015 prize. Self-published titles are not eligible. See here for details.