Hong Kong: The Chinese author behind Oscar-nominated film `Raise the Red Lantern` has won a major Asian literary prize with his latest novel, set during the Cultural Revolution, organisers said Tuesday.
Su Tong`s `The Boat to Redemption` was awarded the third-annual Man Asian Literary Prize, which is open to novels from the region that have not yet been published in English.
The story is about a Communist Party official forced to make a new life among a community of boat people after being banished from the Party at the end of the tumultuous Cultural Revolution in the 1960s-70s.
The panel of judges, which included Irish novelist Colm Toibin, described Su`s work as a "picaresque novel of immense charm".
"It is a story about obsessive love, the story of the relationship between a father and a son, and a story about the revolutionary impulse," the judges said in a statement.
"It is also a political fable with an edge which is both comic and tragic, and 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 received 10,000 US dollars at a celebratory dinner held in Hong Kong late Monday.
The writer`s best-known work is the novella "Wives and Concubines", which was made into the film "Raise the Red Lantern", directed by China`s most prominent filmmaker Zhang Yimou and starring actress Gong Li.
He has also published six novels and more than 120 short stories.
Su`s work beat competition from Filipino author Eric Gamalinda for "Day Scholar", and three Indian writers -- Omair Ahmad for "Jimmy the Terrorist", Siddharth Chowdhury for "The Descartes Highlands", and Nitasha Kaul for "Residue".
The prize is backed by the company that sponsors Britain`s prestigious Booker Prize.
The inaugural prize was awarded in 2007 to "Wolf Totem" by Jiang Rong, which was published in English in early 2008.
Filipino author Miguel Syjuco`s `Ilustrado`, which won the 2008 prize, will also be published in English next year.
Bureau Report
First Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 10:02
