2009 Man Asian Literary Prize Longlist

The twenty-four title longlist for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize was announced last week and is listed in full below. The press release has bio information for all of the authors, but not a lot of info on their books.

(Just as Michael Orthofer has his bit about how this award isn’t Asian enough I have my standard complaint that the best way of increasing awareness and appreciation for these “unpublished works of Asian fiction in English” is to include excerpts on the website.)

Anyway, here’s the list:

• Gopilal Acharya, With a Stone in My Heart

• Omair Ahmad, Jimmy the Terrorist

• Siddharth Chowdhury, Day Scholar

• Kishwar Desai, Witness the Night

• Samuel Ferrer, The Last Gods of Indochine

• Eric Gamalinda, The Descartes Highlands

• Ram Govardhan, Rough with the Smooth

• Kanishka Gupta, History of Hate

• Kameroon Rasheed Ismeer, Memoirs of a Terrorist

• Ratika Kapur, Overwinter

• Mariam Karim, The Bereavement of Agnes Desmoulins

• Sriram Karri, The Autobiography of a Mad Nation

• Nitasha Kaul, Residue

• R. Zamora Linmark, Leche

• Mario I. Miclat, Secrets of the Eighteen Mansions

• Clarissa V. Militante, Different Countries

• Varuna Mohite, Omigod

• Dipika Mukherjee, Thunder Demons

• Hena Pillai, Blackland

• Roan Ching-Yueh, Lin Xiu-Tzi and her Family

• Edgar Calabia Samar, Eight Muses of the Fall

• K. Srilata, Table for Four

• Su Tong, The Boat to Redemption

• Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, Shadow of the Red Star

The shortlist will be announced in October, and the winner on Monday, November 16th.