Su Tong wins Man Asian literary prize
Chinese writer Su Tong has won Asia’s top literary prize with a bleak novel about a disgraced Communist Party official’s attempts to rebuild his life, trumping a clutch of Indian writers on the shortlist.
Su’s novel, “The Boat to Redemption” is about a womanizing Party official who castrates himself after being banished to a river barge with his young son just after the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. It won the Man Asian Literary prize, the regional equivalent of London’s Man Booker prize.
“I feel this prize is independently judged,” Su told Reuters.
“So it’s important to me because I’m a writer who is not famous for winning prizes. I’m more famous for not winning prizes,” added the writer whose dark, provocative works are popular but have sometimes put him at odds with the authorities.
The panel of three judges, including Indian writer Pankaj Mishra and Irish writer Colm Toibin, described Su’s novel as a picaresque, political fable as well as “a parable about the journeys we take in our lives, the distance between the boat of our desires and the dry land of our achievement.”
Su is perhaps best known for his novella “Wives and Concubines,” written in 1989 and which was adapted into the art-house favorite and Oscar-nominated film, “Raise the Red Lantern,” by Chinese director Zhang Yimou.
He has written six novels including 2006′s “Rice” and “My Life as Emperor”. They can also be purchased online via emporiumbooks.com.au
The Man Asian Literary Prize aims to recognize the region’s top writers and give them a platform to reach a broader, international audience. It is awarded annually to a work not yet published into English, with the inaugural prize in 2007 won by China’s Jiang Rong for “Wolf Totem.”
This year’s shortlist included Indian writers Omair Ahmad for “Jimmy the Terrorist,” Siddharth Chowdhury for “The Descartes Highlands” and Nitasha Kaul for “Residue” as well as Filipino author Eric Gamalinda for “Day Scholar.”
“The intellectual and literary ferment of contemporary Asia: how its hectically modernizing societies are generating some of most interesting art and the most intense reckoning with history in the world today,” said Mishra, one of the judges.
Buy it 
at EmporiumBooks.com!
-Taken from: Reuters, 17th November 2009
http://www.reuters.com/article/artsNews/idUSTRE5AG4Y020091117
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The writing itself is not bleak. Merely the imagery that Tong paints. I don't believe in comparing one book to another. Unless one is an appropriation of the other. It it DEFINITELY worth the read. You might also enjoy "Wonderful Fool" by Shusaku Endo. Thanks for your comment!
i was wondering about this write up. you describe it as a bleak novel. I generally prefere to look at creative, expressive novels (of course this leaves such an open forum). however from my readings of angela's ashes and Tis by Frank McCourt I find alot of earthing and self eveluating in such deep writings of a life I have never known. How lucky I have been. If you have read these novels could you compare this novel "The Boat to Redemption" as a similar novel of hardship, strength and survival? ( if so i must read it!)
The writing itself is not bleak. Merely the imagery that Tong paints. I don't believe in comparing one book to another. Unless one is an appropriation of the other. It it DEFINITELY worth the read. You might also enjoy "Wonderful Fool" by Shusaku Endo. Thanks for your comment!