Kiriyama Shortlist Announced

The shortlist for the 2007 Kiriyama Prize has been announced. One winner each from fiction and non-fiction will be selected to share the $30,000 prize. In 2007, shortlisted writers hail from Canada, China, India, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Though eligible writers can be from anywhere in the world, books that are considered for the prize must be available in English and published in the United States or Canada. The goal of the Kiriyama Prize is to annually recognize and award outstanding books that promote greater understanding of and among the nations of the Pacific Rim and of South Asia.

The 2007 Kiriyama Prize finalists are:

Non-Fiction

• The Haiku Apprentice by Abigail Friedman (Stone Bridge Press)
• Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir by Ernestine Hayes (University of Arizona Press)
• Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Viking)
• Tigers in Red Weather: A Quest for the Last Wild Tigers by Ruth Padel (Walker & Company)
• Chinese Lessons: An American, His Classmates, and the Story of the New China by John Pomfret (Henry Holt)

Fiction

• The Inheritance of Loss by Kirin Desai (Grove Atlantic)
• Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Haruki Murakami (Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin translators) (Alfred A. Knopf)
• Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian (Flora Drew translator) (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
• Certainty by Madeleine Thien (McClelland & Stewart, Canada; Little, Brown, USA)
• Behold the Many by Lois-Ann Yamanaka (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Picador)

The finalists will be announced in late March.