The BS column: Mapping Asia

The definition of South Asia is not permanently fixed,” publisher and writer Urvashi Butalia observed recently. Neither, by implication, is the definition of what puts the India in the term “Indian writing”, and in different ways, three separate Indian/ Asian prizes are looking for new ways to populate the shelf of South Asian literature.

For the Vodafone Crossword, now over a decade old, the battle over the years has been twofold. How do you identify a writer as Indian? And how do you find the right balance between encouraging new, or local, writers and not penalizing those who have done well in markets outside India? These may seem like esoteric questions, but the results are reflected in the prize shortlists—and that, whether the general reader is aware of the processes involved or not, determines whether a literary prize will stand or fall in the long run.

Historically, prizes that have pushed an ideological or political agenda haven’t done well. The only test of whether a literary prize is working as it should or not isn’t reflected in the number of struggling writers it supports or honours; any prize, from the Pulitzer to the Crossword, will ultimately be judged by whether it consistently yields good reading lists.

The Crossword opened up the prize a few years ago to writers who could be considered Indian—William Dalrymple being the most prominent example—by dint of length of stay in the country, or some evidence of Indian origin. The problem with this sort of criteria, as the Crossword and other literary prizes have discovered, is that it turns the prize administrators into a quasi-customs office, with the job of scrutinizing the passports of writers—and this doesn’t work. This year, Dalrymple wasn’t eligible to be considered in the non-fiction category, since he’s not an Indian citizen. I understand the dilemma the Crossword faces, but the result is that their shortlists risk being slanted in one direction or the other: either too insular or too inclusive.
(A full list of shortlisted Crossword titles is available here.)

The Man Asian Literary Prize is, similarly, moving past the teething troubles of the early years. One of its aims, and a noble one, was to encourage emerging, talented writers who hadn’t been published yet. The outcome of accepting unpublished manuscripts for consideration, though, was that the gap between the announcement of the winners/ shortlisted authors and the availability of their books became a gulf.
The memory of the general reader is short; most of us want to buy books the moment a shortlist is announced. This year, the Man Asian has moved back to accepting only books that are already published—which should give it a more reader-friendly list. The criteria for defining the Asianness of the writer remains the passport and the nationality, which, given the massive geographical spread, could lead to fascinating but very eclectic shortlists in the future.

The recently announced DSC Prize for South Asian literature has a much smaller focus—the restriction to the subcontinent rather than to the entire Asian continent makes it narrower, but also makes it more likely that the shortlists will feature books with common themes and interests. More controversial is the decision to define South Asian literature by content, rather than by nationality—if your book has a South Asian setting or South Asian characters, it qualifies. This will lead to some confusion; Asian authors who write about other times and places will be left out, and you could theoretically have a shortlist that features six Asian books, but not a single Asian writer.

Over time, though, both the DSC and the Man Asian prize could help us come to a better understanding of what Asian fiction is, as a category—if such a beast exists. It’s as complex as trying to define what makes an Indian novel Indian, and perhaps it will be as much fun.

Tailpiece: Sarita Mandanna’s Tiger Hills illustrates a point about the dangers of getting what’s known as the Bastard Child comparison wrong in the blurb. (This refers to the an overworked blurb-writer/ reviewer cliché: “X novel reads like a cross between William Faulkner and William Styron”; “If Bret Easton Ellis and Judith Krantz had offspring, this book would be their firstborn” etc.) Tiger Hills, one of the most-hyped debut novels of this season, drew pre-publication comparisons to Gone With The Wind and The Thorn Birds.

I can say with some confidence that this two-generation family historical saga set in Coorg starring an impossibly beautiful, willful heroine, an impossibly romantic tiger hunter and an impossibly annoying faithful husband with not one but two deep, dark secrets resembles neither Margaret Mitchell’s deathless bestseller nor Colleen McCollough’s equally indestructible forbidden-love pulp epic. It is, however, the child of The Far Pavilions and House of Blue Mangoes, as midwifed by Jodi Picoult, which will doubtless appeal to many readers. Just don’t expect Scarlett and Rhett in the Coorg hills.

(Update: Over at The Complete Review, MA Orthofer quite rightly points out that the "massive geographical spread" of the Man Asian Prize is limited to a relative handful of countries--he counts just 23. Here's his take:

http://complete-review.com/saloon/index.htm#qs9)

The BS Column: In search of an Asian prize

(Published in the Business Standard, July 27, 2009)

The literary world attracts its share of harmless lunatics, and for some years, my mailbox was enlivened by the presence of a gentleman I will call Mr S K Parthasarathi. He had never been published, but had a burning desire to be recognised as an author.

For three consecutive years, he sent out exuberant emails announcing: “The S K Parthasarathi Award for Stellar and Superior Writing, judged by eminent Man of Letters Mr S K Parthasarathi, has been won by the finest Author, Mr S K Parthasarathi.” When he stopped sending the mails, it left a void in my life that nothing, not the Crossword, the Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize nor the Man Asian Booker could fill.

The SK Parthasarathi Award had this to its credit: it kept all parties happy, from the author to the judge to the prize administrator. The other three evolving literary prizes on the list face considerably greater challenges.

The Vodafone Crossword award has grown over the last eleven years, evolving as a multitude of issues from the nationality of the authors to the visibility of the prize has emerged. This year, the fiction award was split between debut author Neel Mukherjee (Past Continuous) and Amitav Ghosh (Sea of Poppies), in a decision that kicked off a post-ceremony debate. Is it fair to judge a new writer against someone who has been writing for years? The Booker judges sometimes deal with this by producing controversial shortlists, ignoring the heavyweights in order to encourage less well-known writers.

A two-winner result is a cop-out. The more “senior” author can feel slighted, the debutante can be unfairly judged, and the remainder of the shortlist can feel doubly dismissed. You could create more categories, but that can make an award a hydra-headed monster—too bewildering for the average reader to follow. Personally, I subscribe to the School of Hard Knocks theory—as a first-time author, your books are going to be judged by readers anyway against the greats. There are times when a debut author’s creativity and freshness will carry the day, and times when years of learning the craft will make a greater impact.

The Man Asian Booker has seen a sharp learning curve since its inception in 2007. The judges’ panel in the first year was drawn out of convenience chiefly from the Hong Kong literary world, since the prize was set up there; this year, the panel has a much wider sweep, with Gish Jen, Pankaj Mishra and Colm Toibin at the helm.

It remains the only major prize to encourage unpublished writers, and to accept manuscripts that have not been written in English. This puts more pressure on the prize administrators, in terms of the volume and range of manuscripts they have to evaluate, and the longlist often shows a huge variation in quality. The prize is still in its third year, and has time to evolve; if it becomes a useful scouting ground for publishers and literary agents, the Man Asian will have done a great deal to erase the invisibility of Asian authors. With a stronger focus on literary quality, this could grow into a substantial prize.

The Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize was instituted in 2008 in memory of the young and talented writer/editor who died in 2007. Its guidelines offer one way of looking at the tricky issue of how to handle an Asian prize. It’s open to all writers from the subcontinent, which takes care of the phantom author syndrome—the nagging sense you get when reading an awards shortlist that someone is missing, only to realise that the author you’re missing is Pakistani or Bangladeshi, not Indian.

By limiting books to the subcontinent, it manages to duck the other thorny issue—how do you define an Asian writer? (Do you include Iran, does an author from coastal China really have anything in common with an author from Nepal, that sort of thing.) The Shakti Bhatt prize is open to all genres. The categories are clearly literary rather than general: poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction (travel writing, autobiography, biography and narrative journalism) and drama.

The stipulation that all books must have been published in India gives entries a local focus. And in a more charming caveat emptor, the guidelines state: “Books that have been published elsewhere and have already won prizes are eligible, though less likely to win.” The breadth of genres might become a tricky area for the prize—it’s hard to judge the merits of poetry versus travel writing, for instance—but the 2008 shortlist was definitely one of the most interesting, from the reader’s point of view.

I don’t know whether any of these three prizes will become the pre-eminent “Asian” prize, but I do hope Shou Xing, god of longevity, will smile on them. As a collective of prizes, they’re likely to sharpen and redefine our view of Asian writing.

N.B. There is also the Golden Quill award, promoted by Indiaplaza, but it hasn't yet defined its criteria. At present, pulp and literary fiction are grouped together, which gives the Quill a very wide but puzzling selection of books. Take a look at this year's longlist.