2004 KIRIYAMA PRIZE WINNERS ANNOUNCED

Fiction winner Shan Sa’s novel is first of her acclaimed works
published in English; Nonfiction winner Inga Clendinnen is first Australian to share in US $30K Prize

SAN FRANCISCO (March 23, 2004) – The 8th annual Kiriyama Prize was awarded today to novelist Shan Sa, the 32-year-old author of The Girl Who Played Go (Chatto and Windus, UK; Alfred A. Knopf, USA); and to historian Inga Clendinnen for her book exploring the first years of European settlement in New South Wales, Dancing with Strangers (Text Publishing, Australia).

The two authors will share equally the US $30,000 cash award, presented by Pacific Rim Voices, the independent nonprofit organization dedicated to celebrating literature that contributes to greater understanding and cooperation among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia.

The Girl Who Played Go: Shan Sa’s novel – the first of her books to be translated into English – is set against the brutal backdrop of war-torn Manchuria in the 1930s. It chronicles the story of a spirited 16-year-old Chinese girl and a Japanese soldier in disguise. Their paths cross in the occupied town square over a game of Go, the ancient Chinese board game that requires artful strategy and skill. As the game’s complexities are revealed, so are the characters’ motivations – and their surprising fates.

Shan Sa was born in 1972 in Beijing. In 1990 she left China for France, where she studied in Paris and worked for two years with the painter Balthus. Her two previous novels were awarded the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman and the Prix Cazes. The Girl Who Played Go (translated by Adriana Hunter) is also available in 19 other languages, and is being adapted for film.

[A review of The Girl Who Played Go and a conversation with the Kiriyama Prize judges are published in WaterBridge Review www.waterbridgereview.org, a free online newsletter sponsored by Pacific Rim Voices.]

Dancing with Strangers: The title of Inga Clendinnen’s book is a metaphor for the initial contact in the late 18th century between two vastly different peoples: the British settlers and Aboriginal Australians. (“The Australians and the British began their relationship,” Dr. Clendinnen writes, “by dancing together.”) The centerpiece of this immensely readable book is the vivid recreation of the events surrounding the spearing of Governor Phillip at Manly Cove in 1790. By retracing the difficulties in the way of understanding people of different cultures, the author’s stated hope is for greater tolerance and social justice.

Inga Clendinnen is also the author of Reading the Holocaust, a New York Times Best Book of the Year in 1999, and winner of the New South Wales Premier’s General History Award. Her 1999 Australian Broadcasting Corporation Boyer Lectures, True Stories, were published in 2000, as was her award-winning memoir Tiger’s Eye. She lectured for many years in the La Trobe University History Department, Melbourne, and now lives in Townsville, Australia.

[For a review of Dancing with Strangers and a conversation with the Kiriyama Prize judges, visit WaterBridge Review www.waterbridgereview.org, a free online newsletter sponsored by Pacific Rim Voices.]

The 2004 Kiriyama Prize fiction finalists included Brick Lane by Monica Ali (Random House, Australia; Transworld Publishers/Doubleday, UK; Simon & Schuster/Scribner, USA); My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey (Random House, Australia; Faber & Faber, UK; Alfred A. Knopf, USA); The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard (Virago/Little Brown, UK; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, USA); The Guru of Love by Samrat Upadhyay (Houghton Mifflin Company, USA).

This year’s nonfiction finalists were White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth Century India by William Dalrymple (Penguin Books, India; HarperCollins, UK; Viking, USA); Out of God's Oven: Travels in a Fractured Land by Dom Moraes and Sarayu Srivatsa (Penguin Books, India); Secrets and Spies: The Harbin Files by Mara Moustafine (Random House, Australia); and Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierny (University of Chicago Press).

Also today, Peter J. Coughlan, administrator of the Prize, announced the 2004 Kiriyama Prize Notable List of 45 titles. The list of 20 fiction and 25 nonfiction books comprise a contemporary bibliography of importance to readers, librarians and educators. [The complete list can be found at www.kiriyamaprize.org]

The Kiriyama Prize is awarded annually 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, New Zealand, the United States, and the Pacific-bordering nations of Latin America) and of the South Asian subcontinent. Authors from anywhere in the world are eligible, provided that their work is written in English or translated into English, and that it relates to the nations of the Pacific Rim or South Asia in a significant way.

Past finalists and winners include Sherman Alexie, Cheng Ch’ing-wen, Carlos Fuentes, Patricia Grace, Ha Jin, Rohinton Mistry, Michael Ondaatje, Ruth L. Ozeki, Elena Poniatowska, Kerri Sakamoto, Pascal Khoo Thwe, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Simon Winchester, and Tim Winton.

Along with the Kiriyama Prize, Pacific Rim Voices (www.pacificrimvoices.org) continues to develop a family of projects celebrating literature from and about the Pacific Rim and South Asia:

For more information about the 2004 Kiriyama Prize Winners, Finalists, and Notable List, visit www.kiriyamaprize.org or call Jeannine Cuevas, Prize Manager
at (415) 777-1628.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Photographs of Shan Sa and Inga Clendinnen are available upon request. Please contact Ellen Ryder at 212/226-6563 or at ellen@ellenrydercommunications.com