WINNERS OF THE 2007 KIRIYAMA PRIZE ANNOUNCED
Japanese literary icon Haruki Murakami takes the honor in fiction, story of mountaineer-turned-humanitarian Greg Mortenson reaches top in nonfiction

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SAN FRANCISCO (March 27, 2007) - Pacific Rim Voices announces today the honorees for the 11th annual Kiriyama Prize. Haruki Murakami's book of short stories, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, is this year's fiction winner along with Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin in nonfiction. The US $30,000 cash prize will be divided between the fiction winner and the two nonfiction winners. The Prize is presented by Pacific Rim Voices, an independent non-profit organization dedicated to celebrating literature that contributes to greater understanding of and among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia.

Author Haruki Murakami is the first Japanese national to win the Kiriyama Prize. The world-renowned author's work has received numerous literary awards in Japan and has been translated into 38 languages. He has written 11 novels, but in the preface to Blind Willow Murakami states clearly his preference for writing short stories, saying "I find writing novels a challenge, writing short stories a joy." In a moment highly befitting the author of surrealistic stories, Murakami realized he could write a novel in the instant he witnessed American baseball player Dave Hilton hit a double in a Yakult Swallows game at Tokyo's Jingu Stadium in 1978. Murakami reportedly went home after the game and began his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, that night. The book was published in 1979.

Writing about Murakami in the Chicago Tribune, NPR's Alan Cheuse, who served as fiction judge for the 2007 Kiriyama Prize, said: "He has mastered the techniques and perspectives of major 20th century Western fiction, turned all of it toward the elucidation of the life of his own culture, and produced stories that have the attractive quality of seeming delightfully familiar and yet pleasingly strange at the same time."

Recognition must also be given to Murakami's translators, Philip Gabriel and Jay Rubin, whose fine work allows English-language readers full access to "Planet Murakami"—the name David Jays of The Observer gives to the author's fictional world. Rubin has authored a book about Murakami's work called Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words.

Judges for nonfiction gave this year's top honors to Three Cups of Tea, co-authored by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin. In 1993, Mortenson, an experienced mountaineer, made an unsuccessful attempt to climb Pakistan's K2, the second highest mountain on Earth. On the descent he was separated from his climbing team. Lost, cold, disoriented, and out of food and water, Mortenson stumbled upon the village of Korphe in an isolated corner of Pakistan. The people there, though they lived with extremely limited resources themselves, shared whatever they could with him. Grateful to the villagers for their kindness, he promised to return to build them a school. Since then, he has dedicated his life to promoting community-based education and literacy programs—especially for girls—in remote mountain regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Co-author David Oliver Relin, a journalist, worked closely with Mortenson to bring his story alive and traveled with him many times to Central Asia. Relin says of Mortenson's work, "If we Americans are to learn from our mistakes, from the flailing, ineffective way we, as a nation, conducted the war on terror after the attacks of 9/11, and from the way we have failed to make our case to the great moderate mass of peace-loving people at the heart of the Muslim world, we need to listen to Greg Mortenson."

Janet Brown, a bookseller from Elliot Bay Book Company in Seattle and one of this year's nonfiction judges said of the book, "Although our cynical world has an aversion to saints, we need heroes more than ever. Greg Mortenson, through the work he has chosen, makes it possible for isolated and ignored villagers to show their heroism, which is revealed in a book filled with high adventure and hope."

Full reviews of the winners and other finalists for this year's Kiriyama Prize, together with a conversation with the Prize judges can be found on the Prize's companion website, waterbridgereview.org.

Photos of the authors and book jacket images of this year's finalists and winners are available upon request from Prize Manager, Jeannine Stronach: jeannine@kiriyamaprize.org.

Along with the eventual winner, the 2007 Kiriyama Prize fiction finalists included The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Grove Atlantic), Stick Out Your Tongue by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Certainty by Madeleine Thien (McClelland & Stewart, Canada; Little, Brown, USA), and Behold the Many by Lois-Ann Yamanaka (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

The other 2007 finalists for nonfiction were The Haiku Apprentice by Abigail Friedman (Stone Bridge Press), Blonde Indian by Ernestine Hayes (University of Arizona Press), Tigers in Red Weather by Ruth Padel (Walker & Company), and Chinese Lessons by William Pomfret (Henry Holt). Also today, Pacific Rim Voices announced the 2007 Kiriyama Prize Notable Books. The list of 7 fiction and 12 nonfiction works follows the body of this release.

Past finalists and winners of the Kiriyama Prize include Sherman Alexie, Nadeem Aslam, Monica Ali, Alan Brown, Peter Carey, Cheng Ch'ing-wen, Inga Clendinnen, Carlos Fuentes, Patricia Grace, Shirley Hazzard, Ha Jin, Suketu Mehta, Rohinton Mistry, Michael Ondaatje, Ruth Ozeki, Andrew X. Pham, Elena Poniatowska, Shan Sa, Kerri Sakamoto, Pascal Khoo Thwe, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Luis Alberto Urrea, Piers Vitebsky, Simon Winchester, and Tim Winton.

The Kiriyama Prize is awarded annually in recognition of outstanding books that promote greater understanding of and among the nations of the Pacific Rim and of South Asia. 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. Pacific Rim Voices, sponsor of the Kiriyama Prize, continues to develop a family of projects celebrating literature from and about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. For more information about the Prize and the 2007 winners and finalists, visit kiriyamaprize.org or contact Jeannine Stronach, Prize Manager, at 415/777-1628 or via email jeannine@kiriyamaprize.org.

The judges for this year's fiction Prize were Alan Cheuse, Pam Chun, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Alden Mudge (chair), and Abby Pollak. The nonfiction panelists were Bridget Boylan, Janet Brown, Sally Ito (chair), Alma Lee, and Joanne Sandstrom.

2007 Kiriyama Prize Notable Books

Fiction

Cellophane by Marie Arana (Dial)

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery (Riverhead)

Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardener (University of Wisconsin Press)

White Ghost Girls by Alice Greenway (Grove Atlantic)

Astral Alibi by Prabhu Manjiri (Bantam)

Night of Sorrows by Frances Sherwood (WW Norton)

The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar (Harper Perennial)

Nonfiction

Glory in a Line: A Life of Foujita—The Artist Caught Between East and West by Phyllis Birnbaum (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Tiger of the Snows: Tenzing Norgay, The Boy Whose Dream Was Everest by Robert Burleigh, illustrated by Ed Young (Atheneum)

Iz: Voice of the People by Rick Carroll (The Bess Press)

The Weathermakers: How Man is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth by Tim Flannery (Atlantic Monthly Press, USA; Text Publishing, Australia; and Allen Lane, UK)

Wild Borneo: The Wildlife and Scenery of Sabah, Sarawak, Brunei, and Kalimantan by Nick Garbutt and J. Cede Prudente (The MIT Press)

Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times by Amitav Ghosh (Houghton Mifflin)

Frog in the Well: Portraits of Japan by Watanabe Kazan, 1793-1841 by Donald Keene (Columbia University Press)

The Great Wall: China Against the World 1000 BC-AD 2000 by Julia Lovell (Grove Atlantic)

Nixon in China: The Week That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan Penguin Books Canada (and from Random House in the US under title "Nixon and Mao")

Enrique’s Journey: The Story of a Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother by Sonia Nozario (Random House US)

Mishima’s Sword: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend by Christopher Ross (Da Capo Press)

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World by John Wood (Collins)

(end of release)

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