Pakistani writer short-listed for Man asian literary award

Five novels showcasing the diversity and depth of writing from Istanbul to Tokyo were announced today as the shortlist for the 2012 Man Asian Literary Prize was revealed, listing distinctive and celebrated writers for the first time in a region-wide context.

The shortlist, which includes writers from five different countries, champions a debut novelist alongside a Nobel laureate, translated work as well as original writing in English, and includes smaller regional publishers as well as larger international houses.

The five shortlisted novels, selected from a longlist of 15, are:

Between Clay and Dust – Musharraf Ali Farooqi (Pakistan)

The Briefcase – Hiromi Kawakami (Japan)

Silent House – Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)

The Garden of Evening Mists – Tan Twan Eng (Malaysia)

Narcopolis – Jeet Thayil (India)

Award winning literary critic and journalist Dr. Maya Jaggi is chair of the 2012 judging panel. Joining Jaggi as Prize judges for 2012 are award winning Vietnamese-American novelist Monique Truong and novelist Vikram Chandra, most notably winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The Prize judges’ comments on (between clay and dust) book can be found below.

Between Clay and Dust

By Musharraf Ali Farooqi (Pakistan)

Published by Aleph Book Company

Dr. Maya Jaggi said, “Set in a decaying inner city after the partition of India, Between Clay and Dust is an elegiac but unromanticised evocation of a dying culture. The tragedy of a champion wrestler, challenged by his younger brother and befriended by an ageing courtesan, has a mythic resonance, as the characters’ ethical codes collide with the values of a new world. Farooqi’s tale is more moving for the spareness and restraint with which it is told.”

Musharraf Ali Farooqi was born in 1968 in Hyderabad, Pakistan. His previous novel, The Story of a Widow (2009), was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. He is also the highly acclaimed translator of Urdu classics Hoshruba (2009) and The Adventures of Amir Hamza (2007), contemporary Urdu poet Afzal Ahmed Syed’s selected poetry Rococo and Other Worlds (2010) and Urdu writer Syed Muhammad Ashraf’s novel The Beast (2010).

The date to announce the winner is on 14th march, so lets pray that a pakistani wins this award