The long-list for the 2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award has been selected from 111 entries. Those on the list include, Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year, Janet Turner Hospital's Orpheus Lost, Malouf's The Complete Stories and Haruki Murakami's novel After Dark, Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Michelle de Krester's The Lost Dog, Rodney Hall's Love without Hope and Alex Miller's Landscape of Farewell are also on the list. From the authors and titles on this list, it seems that literary fiction is alive and well in Asia.
It is a pity that there is no such award for crime fiction. One of the judges Nury Vittachi is a well-established crime fiction writer. It is interesting that he’s been brought in to judge this contest.
In order to enter this competition you must either reside in Australia or Asia or set your work in Australia or an Asian country, and either write or have your book translated into English and have been published in the past year. In any event, if you have a literary novel set in Australia or Asia, you might want to think about having your publisher submit for this award in 2009.
There are three judges - Melbourne literary critic Peter Craven, Pakistani-born author Kamila Shamsie and Hong Kong based founder of the Asia Literary Review Nury Vittachi.
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