The Man Asian Literary Prize was an annual literary award between 2007 and 2012, given to the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in English or translated into English, and published in the previous calendar year. It is awarded to writers who are citizens or residents of one of the following 34 (out of 50) Asian countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, East Timor, India, Indonesia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, The Hong Kong or Macau SAR's, The Maldives, The PRC of China, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Vietnam. Submissions are invited through publishers who are entitled to each submit two novels by August 31 each year. Entry forms are available from May.
From 2010 to 2012, the Man Asian Literary Prize awarded USD 30,000 to the author and an additional USD 5,000 to the translator (if any). For the prize of the first three years of its running, from 2007 to 2009, the Man Asian Literary Prize awarded USD 10,000 (author)/ 3,000 USD (translator) to a novel written by an Asian writer of the elective countries, either in English or translated into English, and yet unpublished. Submissions were made by the authors. The reason given by the Prize for the changes introduced in 2010 include the difficulty in finding talented unpublished authors. With the new format, which has shortlisted and winning novels already available to the literary community, media and general public, the Man Asian Literary Prize recognises “the best English works each year by Asian authors and aims to significantly raise international awareness and appreciation of Asian literature.”
The Man Asian Literary Prize was sponsored by Man Group plc., title sponsor of the Man Booker Prize. It was announced in October 2012 that Man Group would no longer sponsor the prize after the 2012 winner was announced in 2013.
– Chinese writer Jiang Rong won the inaugural prize with his work, Wolf Totem.
Judging panel
Andre Aciman (United States)
Adrienne Clarkson (Canada)
Nicholas Jose (Australia)
Shortlist
Jiang Rong was selected from a short-list of five:
Jose Dalisay Jr., Soledad's Sister
Reeti Gadekar, Families at Home
Nu Nu Yi Inwa, Smile As They Bow
Jiang Rong, Wolf Totem
Xu Xi, Habit of a Foreign Sky
Also longlisted in 2007
On 20 July 2007, the Prize announced a list of 23 names:
Tulsi Badrinath, The Living God
Sanjay Bahadur, The Sound Of Water
Kankana Basu, Cappuccino Dusk
Sanjiv Bhatla, InJustice
Shahbano Bilgrami, Without Dreams
Saikat Chakraborty, The Amnesiac
Xiaolu Guo, 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth
Ameena Hussein, The Moon in the Water
Hitomi Kanehara, Autofiction
N S Madhavan, Litanies of Dutch Battery
Laxmi Narayan Mishra, The Little God
Mo Yan, Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out
Nalini Rajan, The Pangolin’s Tale
Chiew-Siah Tei, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes
Shreekumar Varma, Maria’s Room
Anuradha Vijayakrishnan, Seeing The Girl
Sujatha Vijayaraghavan, The Silent One
Egoyan Zheng, Fleeting Light
– In 2008, the Man Asian Literary Prize was awarded to Miguel Syjuco, a Filipino writer now based in Montreal, for his novel Ilustrado.
Judging panel
Adrienne Clarkson (Canada)
Pankaj Mishra (India)
Nicholas Jose (Australia)
Shortlist
Kaveri Nambisan, The Story that Must Not be Told
Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay
Miguel Syjuco, Ilustrado
Yu Hua, Brothers
Alfred A. Yuson, The Music Child
Also longlisted in 2008
On 22 July 2008, the Prize announced a list of 21 names:
Tulsi Badrinath, Melting Love
Hans Billimoria, Ugly tree
Ian Casocot, Sugar Land
Han Dong, Banished
Anjum Hasan, Neti,Neti
Daisy Hasan, The To-Let House
Abdullah Hussein, The Afghan Girl
Tsutomu Igarashi, To the Temple
Rupa Krishnan, Something Wicked This Way Comes
Murong Xuecun, Leave Me Alone, Chengdu
Sumana Roy, Love in the Chicken's Neck
Vaibhav Saini, On the Edge of Pandemonium
Salma, Midnight Tales
Lakambini Sitoy, Sweet Haven
Sarayu Srivatsa, The Last Pretense
Amit Varma, My Friend, Sancho
– The winner for 2009 was Su Tong for The Boat to Redemption.
Judging panel
Colm Tóibín (Ireland)
Gish Jen (United States)
Pankaj Mishra (India)
Shortlist
On October 15, 2009, the Prize announced a shortlist of 5 names:
Omair Ahmad, Jimmy the Terrorist
Siddharth Chowdhury, Day Scholar
Eric Gamalinda, The Descartes Highlands
Nitasha Kaul, Residue
Su Tong, The Boat to Redemption
Also longlisted in 2009
On 24 July 2009, the Prize announced a list of 24 names:
Gopilal Acharya, With a Stone in My Heart
Kishwar Desai, Witness the Night
Samuel Ferrer, The Last Gods of Indochine
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
Karri Sriram, The Autobiography of a Mad Nation
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
Oyungerel Tsedevdamba, Shadow of the Red Star
– The winner, Bi Feiyu's Three Sisters, was announced March 17, 2011.
Judging Panel
Monica Ali (United Kingdom)
Homi K. Bhabha (United States)
Hsu-Ming Teo (Australia)
Shortlist
Bi Feiyu, Three Sisters
Manu Joseph, Serious Men
Tabish Khair, The Thing About Thugs
Kenzaburō Ōe, The Changeling
Yoko Ogawa, Hotel Iris
Also longlisted in 2010
Upamanyu Chatterjee, Way to Go
Anosh Irani, Dahanu Road
Sarita Mandanna, Tiger Hills
Usha K.R., Monkey-man
Criselda Yabes, Below the Crying Mountain
The winner, Shin Kyung-sook for Please Look After Mom, was announced March 15, 2012. She was the first woman to win the prize.
Judging panel
Razia Iqbal, chair (Uganda)
Chang-rae Lee (Korean-American)
Vikas Swarup (India)
Shortlist
Jamil Ahmad, The Wandering Falcon
Jahnavi Barua, Rebirth
Rahul Bhattacharya, The Sly Company of People Who Care
Amitav Ghosh, River of Smoke
Shin Kyung-sook, Please Look After Mom
Yan Lianke, Dream of Ding Village
Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake
Also longlisted in 2011
Tahmima Anam, The Good Muslim
Mahmoud Dowlatabadi, The Colonel
Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
Anuradha Roy, The Folded Earth
Tarun J Tejpal, The Valley of Masks
The winner, Tan Twan Eng for The Garden of Evening Mists, was announced March 15, 2013.
Judging panel
Maya Jaggi, chair (United Kingdom)
Monique Truong (Vietnamese-American)
Vikram Chandra (India)
Shortlist (announced 9 January 2013)
Musharraf Ali Farooqi, Between Clay and Dust
Hiromi Kawakami, The Briefcase
Orhan Pamuk, Silent House
Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists
Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
Also longlisted
Benyamin, Goat Days
Anjali Joseph, Another Country
Uzma Aslam Khan, Thinner Than Skin
Kim Thúy, Ru
Kim Young-ha, Black Flower
Nayomi Munaweera, Island of a Thousand Mirrors
Elif Shafak, Honour
Sheng Keyi, Northern Girls
Roma Tearne, The Road To Urbino
Tie Ning, The Bathing Women