Just quickly...

The International Publishers Association (IPA) today announced the shortlist for the 2017 IPA Prix Voltaire, which rewards exemplary courage in upholding the freedom to publish and in enabling others to exercise their right to freedom of expression. Shortlisted publishers include Kim Jeong-ae (North Korea / South Korea), Way Moe (Myanmar), and Minhai Gui (Hong Kong / Sweden). For more information click here.

Just quickly...

Click here for my review of Erotic Stories For Punjabi Widows by Ballin Kaur Jaswal, for Asian Review of Books. 

My working day by Eldes Tran

My working day is an occasional series in which publishing professionals talk about their jobs.

Eldes Tran is an assistant editor at Epigram Books, Singapore’s largest independent publisher of local stories for all ages. She mostly edits nonfiction manuscripts, but also some children’s books. Apart from editing, she also acts as a project manager seeing a book through all stages, including making sure the right illustrator is picked, the layout is balanced, and deadlines are met.

Epigram Books is Eldes’ first foray into book publishing, but she has been an editor for 11 years in the US and Asia. She started at newspapers Newsday and the Los Angeles Times, and later spent six years in Hong Kong with the South China Morning Post and New York Times.

So, over to Eldes...

Hong Kong authors mark 20 years since the handover by Pete Spurrier

Close to a hundred people filled the Bookazine bookshop in Prince’s Building, Hong Kong, on the evening of June 15, to hear six local authors discuss the 20 years which have passed since the handover in 1997.

As the publisher of four of these writers, I was roped in to MC the event. I started off by asking how many of the crowd were in Hong Kong on that rainy night of June 30, 1997. About half, it turned out. But of those, far fewer had expected to still be here 20 years later.

First question went to Rachel Cartland, author of Paper Tigress, an account of her 34 years working in the Hong Kong government. Many people in the audience remembered seeing police officers replacing their cap badges as sovereignty was transferred at the stroke of midnight on handover night. Rachel stayed in office through 1997 and beyond, so did she have any badge to change? No, she said, but non-stop heavy rain during the handover period ruined everyone’s extra-long public holiday allowance!

Q & A Gregory Norminton

Gregory Norminton is an English novelist of French and Belgian extraction, who has spent time in Malaysia, Malaysian Borneo, and Cambodia. He has recently published The Ghost Who Bled, a collection of fourteen short stories that range widely in space and time. He takes the reader from medieval Byzantium and Elizabethan London, to Japan and the jungles of Malaya in the more resent past, to Edinburgh in the present-day, and on to a climate-changed San Francisco of the near future. His scope is ambitious, but he says: “I reserve the right - as all authors should, provided they do the research and are humble towards their material - to set stories in places that I have not visited. Since much of my writing is either historical or speculative, what choice do I have?”

He answered a few questions for Asian Books Blog.

New book announcement: Blood and Silk by Michael Vatikiotis

Michael Vatikiotis is a member of the Asia Society's International Council and has a decade of experience working as a conflict mediator for the Geneva-based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. He is a former BBC journalist who has worked in Asia for over thirty years, living in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and his current home, Singapore.

Blood and Silk: Power and Conflict in Modern Southeast Asia is in part his memoir and in part a political study of the dynamics of modern Southeast Asia, a frontline of two of the most important global conflicts: the struggle between a declining West and a rising China, and that between religious tolerance and extremism.

Southeast Asia accounts for sizeable chunks of global investment and manufacturing capacity; it straddles essential lines of trade and communication.  Whether it is mobile phone parts or clothing and accessories, Southeast Asia is a vital link in the global supply chain.

A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman wins Man Booker International Prize

A Horse Walks Into a Bar by David Grossman has won the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. The novel was translated from Hebrew by Jessica Cohen. Celebrating global fiction in translation, the Man Booker International Prize awards both the winning author and translator GBP25,000. (USD32,000 approx).