- Logo designed by Matt Todd of A Novel Approach.
[UPDATE: Five of my personal shortlisted books are on the judges' shortlist of seven. The Good Muslim is the title I liked that did not move on to the final round. Click here for the Man Asian judges' shortlist.]
On Tuesday, January 10th, the Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist will be announced, consisting of five or six titles from the 12-book longlist. After reading eleven of the longlisted books, I am going to pick six and assume that at least one of my choices will be wrong. The longlisted novel I did not get around to, Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84, is almost a sure thing, since Murakami is Murakami, after all. It would not be surprising if half of my choices are wrong; such is the quality of the longlist. Unranked, in alphabetical order by author, here is my personal shortlist.
The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad.
The Good Muslim by Tahmina Anam.
The Sly Company of People Who Care by Rahul Bhattacharya.
River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh.
Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin.
Dream of Ding Village by Yan Lianke.
The links go to my reviews. For reviews of all of the longlisted books by bloggers on the Man Asian Literary Prize Shadow Jury, click on the logo above.
Good for you Fay … I’ve only read one of those but have two in my hands at present so hope you are right.
Sue, it was an intensive weekend of reading to get through two more books.I propose a shortlist just for fun.If the judges choose other books, well, they used different criteria. That’s OK. It will just mean they have a strong field to choose from.
What a great project. It will be a lot of fun to compare your list to the official one.
Great list Fay … Very close to their list. it changes what I’ll read next.
Joy, the judges named seven books instead of the expected six, and no Murakami. I named five of the seven and am feeling pretty good about the judges.
Sue, you have some great reading ahead. Cannot wait to see your reviews.
Hi Fay, I didn’t name a hoped-for list, but I think mine would have pretty much mirrored yours – only with The Folded Earth replacing The Good Muslim. It seems there are one or two that are going to divide opinions on the shadow jury: namely, Please Look After Mother and The Lake. Looks like fun!
Mark, I liked The Folded Earth a lot, especially the writing style, but it seemed to taper off at the end in an unsatisfying way. This is a shortlist we can work with, I think, and the discussion should be more about relative positives than about weaknesses.
Yep agree re Folded earth, as you know. Have just read my next one and will post review in next day or so. Now waiting for another to read – one ordered online, and a couple from the library so there’ll be a hiatus. Will look for the Ghosh in local bookshops … I guess there’s a chance they’ll have that one.
Hiatus sounds good to me too. I still have 3 reviews to write for Man Asian shortlisted books and 2 months to get it done. Not in a big hurry.
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