Nobel laureate leads Man Asian prize contenders

Kenzaubro Oe graphic after pciking up his Nobel prize. Photograph: IBL / Rex Features Japanese author Kenzaburo Oe, who was awarded a Nobel esteem for novel in 1994, is a star name among a 10 authors longlisted for this year's Man Asian good read prize.His novel The Changeling, in that an ageing bard strives to assimilate what drove his brother-in-law to suicide, joins work by writers from China, India and a Philippines in contention for a award.Novelists Monica Ali and Hsu-Ming Teo, and academic and critic Homi K Bhabha, have been a judges of a $30,000 (19,000) prize, set up in 2007 to applaud a most appropriate novel by an Asian writer, written in English or translated, published in a prior year.Also chosen for a shortlist have been Manu Joseph's entrance novel Serious Men, an examination of standing in ? la mode India that won The Hindu most appropriate novella award in November; a ? la mode novel about 3 Chinese women struggling to shift their lives, Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu; Hotel Iris, a story of a 17-year-old's fascination for a prime male by Yoko Ogawa; and a novel about a Moro fighting back in Sulu in a Philippines, Below a Crying Mountain by Criselda Yabes. The remaining candidates include a story of an octagenarian who goes blank from his deathbed, Way to Go by Upamanyu Chatterjee; as good as The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair, Tiger Hills by Sarita Mandanna; Dahanu Road by Anosh Irani and Monkey-man by Usha KR.A shortlist will be published in February, with a leader voiced a following month.
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