October 29, 2002

2002 Kiriyama Prize Winners Announced
Rohinton Mistry and Pascal Khoo Thwe To Share US$30,000 Award Honoring Fiction and Nonfiction Work

SAN FRANCISCO (October 29, 2002) — The 7th annual Kiriyama Prize was awarded today to acclaimed Canadian writer Rohinton Mistry, for his third novel, Family Matters (Canada: McClelland & Stewart; UK: Faber & Faber; US: Knopf;) and to Pascal Khoo Thwe, a 35-year-old Burmese immigrant to London, for his memoir, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey (UK and US: HarperCollins).

In addition to announcing this year’s winners, Peter J. Coughlan, administrator of the Prize, made known today the 2002 Kiriyama Prize Notable List of 47 titles. The list of 22 fiction and 25 nonfiction books comprise a contemporary bibliography of importance to readers, librarians and educators. (The complete list can be found at http://www.kiriyamaprize.org)

Following his acclaimed novels Such a Long Journey (1991) and A Fine Balance (1995), Bombay native Rohinton Mistry offers in Family Matters a third masterly novel and establishes himself as one of the outstanding writers of English today. At the center of the novel — set in modern Bombay — is Nariman Vakeel, the patriarch of a small and discordant Parsi family, who is suffering from Parkinson’s disease. A fall, in which he breaks his ankle, throws him upon the mercy of his family, a situation that Nariman wryly likens to that of King Lear. The resulting family tensions are explored with humor and tenderness.

Mistry’s skill is such that in a two-room apartment he finds and reveals a world of meaning. This is a warm, wise, and beautifully paced novel in which humor and compassion help us all make sense of the world in which we live. Commenting on the Prize Winner, David Kipen, book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and one of this year’s fiction judges, writes, “Rohinton Mistry interweaves the sudden and the gradual with a syncopation that few will fail to recognize as the very rhythm of human life.”

The autobiographical account offered by Pascal Khoo Thwe in his first book, From the Land of Green Ghosts, is the story of a young man’s upbringing in a remote Burmese village as a member of the Padaung hill tribe, and of his subsequent journey from his strife-torn country through Thailand and Europe. The first member of his community ever to study English at Mandalay University, he was driven into the jungle by the regime’s oppression and became a guerilla fighter. A letter sent to him by John Casey, a Cambridge don he had earlier met in Mandalay, not only reached the other side of the world, but resulted in the author being rescued from the jungle and enrolling to study English at Cambridge University. Hauntingly and poetically written, this book recounts Pascal Khoo Thwe’s journey to freedom despite almost unimaginable odds.

In his introduction, Casey describes the book as “an astonishing, thrilling and true story.” In his review for the Kiriyama Prize website, James Rosenthal, a former U.S. Ambassador and Chair of this year’s nonfiction panel, describes it as “…first and foremost an exciting adventure story, a true personal ‘odyssey.’ But it is much more. It is also a masterly commentary on Burma itself – its beauty and history, its spiritual and ethnic diversity, its current political agony.”

The 2002 Kiriyama Prize fiction shortlist included Red Poppies by Alai, translated by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin (Australia: Penguin Books; US: Houghton Mifflin; UK: Methuen); Melal: A Novel of the Pacific by Robert Barclay (US: The University of Hawai'i Press); The Girl From the Coast by Pramoedya Ananta Toer, translated by Willem Samuels (US: Hyperion East); and Dirt Music by Tim Winton (Australia and UK: Pan Macmillan; US: Scribner/Simon & Schuster).

This year’s nonfiction shortlist included Singing to the Dead: A Missioner’s Life among Refugees from Burma by Victoria Armour-Hileman (US: University of Georgia Press); Korean Endgame: A Strategy for Reunification and U.S. Disengagement by Selig S. Harrison (US: Princeton University Press); Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912 by Donald Keene (US: Columbia University Press) and The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices by Xinran, translated by Esther Tyldesley (UK: Chatto & Windus; Canada: Random House; US: Pantheon).

The Kiriyama Prize is awarded in recognition of outstanding books that promote greater understanding of and among the nations of the Pacific Rim (East and Southeast Asia, Australia, Pacific Islands, Canada, Mexico, the United States, and the Pacific-bordering nations of Latin America) and of the South Asian subcontinent. Books from anywhere in the world are eligible, provided they are written or translated into English, and relate to the nations of the Pacific Rim or South Asia in a significant way.

The Kiriyama Prize is a Pacific Rim Voices project (http://www.pacificrimvoices.org). It was established in 1996 as an annual award for a single outstanding book that encouraged greater understanding among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim. To acknowledge the diversity and quantity of books entered for the Prize, both a fiction and nonfiction winner have been awarded since 1999. Past winners have included Alan Brown (US), Cheng Ch’ing-wen (Taiwan), Patricia Grace (New Zealand), Peter Hessler (US), Michael David Kwan (Canada), Michael Ondaatje (Canada), Ruth L. Ozeki (US), and Andrew X. Pham (US).

For more information about the 2002 Kiriyama Prize Winners, Finalists, and Notable List, visit http://www.kiriyamaprize.org or call Jeannine Cuevas, Prize Manager at 1 (415) 777-1628.

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NOTE TO EDITORS: Photographs of Rohinton Mistry and Pascal Khoo Thwe are available upon request. Please contact the offices of the Kiriyama Prize at 1 (415) 777-1628 or email jeannine@kiriyamaprize.org.

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