2008 Australia-Asia Literary Award: Longlist

THE LONGLIST for the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award was announced on October 17, 2008 by Culture and Arts Minister John Day. The Australia-Asia Literary Award is the richest literary award in Australia and Asia valued at A$110,000. This ground-breaking award is for a book-length work of literary fiction written by an author resident in Australia or Asia, or a work primarily set in Australia or an Asian country. Works must have been either written in, or translated into, English and published in the preceding year.

All works submitted must be nominated by publishers and written in the English language. If the winning entry is a work translated into English, the author will receive A$88,000 and the translator A$22,000.

The winner of the Australia-Asia Literary Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Award Premier’s Prize will be announced at an awards ceremony on November 21, 2008 (Friday), at Fraser’s Restaurant in Kings Park, Western Australia.

The Longlist
1. Diary of a Bad Year (Random House) / J.M. Coetzee
2. The Trout Opera (Random House/Vintage) / Matthew Condon
3. The Lost Dog (Allen & Unwin) / Michelle De Kretser
4. Blood Kin (Atlantic Books) / Ceridwen Dovey
5. Love without Hope (Pan Macmillan) / Rodney Hall
6. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (Penguin) / Mohsin Hamid
7. Burning In (Giramondo) / Mireille Juchau
8. The Complete Stories (Random House) / David Malouf
9. Landscape of Farewell (Allen & Unwin) / Alex Miller
10. After Dark (trans. Jay Rubin) (Random House) / Haruki Murakami
11. Animal’s People (Simon & Schuster UK) / Indra Sinha
12. Orpheus Lost (HarperCollins) / Janet Turner Hospital

A panel of three judges comprising Pakistan-born author Kamila Shamsie, Hong Kong-based founder of the Asia Literary Review Nury Vittachi and Melbourne literary critic Peter Craven will narrow the list down to six by October 30, 2008.