From the press release:
Bi Feiyu was today announced the winner of the 2010 Man Asian Literary Prize for his novel Three Sisters.
Bi was named the winner at a black tie prize dinner at the Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong, receiving a cash award of USD$30,000. The novel’s translators Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin will share a cash prize of USD$5,000.
The author becomes the third Chinese writer to win the Prize in its four year history. The three winning novels by Chinese authors have all been translated by Howard Goldblatt.
The winner said, “I am extremely honoured to receive the Man Asian Literary Prize tonight. Although this is a young prize, I now believe that in a very short time it will become a very important prize in Asia. I expect that it will be taken very seriously by all serious writers in Asia. ”
Commenting on Three Sisters, the judges said the novel was, “A moving exploration of Chinese family and village life during the Cultural Revolution, that moves seamlessly between the epic and the intimate, the heroic and the petty, illuminating not only individual lives but an entire society, within a gripping tale of familial conflict and love.”
The three distinguished judges for this year’s Prize were Monica Ali, Homi K. Bhabha and Hsu-Ming Teo.
The full shortlist of five books were:
- Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu
- Serious Men by Manu Joseph
- The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair
- The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe
- Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa