...literary masterpiece

Pinay author in longlist for Man Asian Literary Prize

12/21/2010

 

Author Cris Yabes at the Turtle Islands in Tawi - Tawi.

Filipina writer Criselda Yabes has made it to the longlist of the prestigious Man Asian Literary Prize 2010 for her first fiction novel Below the Crying Mountain.

She is the lone Filipino among the 10 contenders that include Nobel Prize for Literature winner Kenzaburo Oe, who wrote The Changeling. The others in the longlist are:

Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu
Way to Go by Upamanyu Chatterjee
Dahanu Road by Anosh Irani
Serious Men by Manu Joseph
The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair
Tiger Hills by Sarita Mandanna
Hotel Iris by Yoko Ogawa
Monkey-man by Usha K.R.

Now on its fourth year, the Man Asian Literary Prize is an annual award that recognizes the best novels by Asian writers and carries a cash prize of US$30,000.

A shortlist of five novels will be announced in February 2011 and the winner will be announced during awarding ceremonies on March 17. This year's judges are British writer Monica Ali, Harvard University professor Homi Bhabha, and Malaysian novelist Hsu-Ming Teo.

Yabes is a journalism graduate of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman and has worked for several international news agencies. In 2008, Below the Crying Mountain won the UP Centennial Literary Prize for fiction in English.

The Man Asian Literary Prize website described her book as follows:

In Below the Crying Mountain the Moro rebellion that broke out in Sulu in the 1970s and that continues to wound the nation is seen vividly through the lives of the mestiza Rosy Wright, the Tausug girl Nahla, the rebel leader Prof. Hassan, the soldier Capt. Rodolfo as well as in the quest of the book’s narrator. The personal is political as war fuels the clash of emotions, histories, and cultures.

Among the five published books of Yabes are Sarena’s Story: The Loss of a Kingdom, which won the UP Centennial Literary Prize for Creative Non-Fiction.

Yabes lived in Paris for several years before returning to Manila in 2006. An excerpt from her latest book on Mindanao scheduled for publication next year was recently featured in the series of articles on the Ampatuan massacre anniversary on GMANews.TV, where she is an occasional contributor. - Jayme Gatbonton/YA, GMANews.TV