SOME NOTABLE WRITERS IN ASIA

Tan Twan Eng

Tan Twan Eng was born in Penang and lived in various places in
Malaysia as a child. He studied law at the University of London and later
worked as lawyer in one of Kuala Lumpur’s most reputable law firms; in
2016, he was an International Writer-in-Residence at Nanyang
Technological University in Singapore. Tan's first novel, The Gift of Rain
(2007), was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and has been translated
into Italian, Spanish, Greek, Romanian, Czech and Serbian. The Garden
of Evening Mists (2011), his second novel, won the Man Asian Literary
Prize and Walter Scott Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker
Prize and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Musharraf Ali Farooqi

Musharraf Ali Farooqi is a critically acclaimed Pakistani author, novelist

and translator.
His novel "Between Clay and Dust" was shortlisted for The Man Asian
Literary Prize 2012 and longlisted for the 2013 DSC Prize for South
Asian Literature. Farooqi's second novel "The Story of a Widow" was
shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2011, and
longlisted for the 2010 IMPAC-Dublin Literary Award.
His most recent children's fiction is the novel "Tik-Tik, The Master of
Time" Pakistan's first English language novel for children. His other
works for children includes the picture book "The Cobbler's Holiday or
Why Ants Don't Wear Shoes" and the collection "The Amazing
Moustaches of Mocchhander the Iron Man and Other Stories" which was
shortlisted for the India ComicCon award in the Best Publication for
Children category.
He is also the author of the critically acclaimed translations of Urdu
classics "The Adventures of Amir Hamza" and the first book of a
projected 24-volume magical fantasy epic "Hoshruba".

Jeet Thayil
Jeet Thayil (born 1959 in Kerala) is an Indian poet, novelist, librettist and
musician. He is best known as a poet and is the author of four collections:
These Errors Are Correct (Tranquebar, 2008), English (2004, Penguin
India, Rattapallax Press, New York, 2004), Apocalypso (Ark, 1997) and
Gemini (Viking Penguin, 1992). His first novel, Narcopolis, (Faber &
Faber, 2012), was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and the
Hindu Literary Prize 2013

Kim Thúy

Kim Thúy arrived in Canada in 1979, at the age of ten. She has worked
as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer and restaurant owner. She currently
lives in Montreal where she devotes herself to writing.
Her debut novel Ru won the Governor General's Award for French
language fiction at the 2010 Governor General's Awards. An English
edition, translated by Sheila Fischman, was published in 2012 and was
a shortlisted nominee for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Thúy spent her early childhood in Vietnam before fleeing with her parents
as boat people and settling in the Montreal suburb of Longueuil. She has
degrees in law, linguistics and translation from the Université de
Montréal.

Nayomi Munaweera

Nayomi Munaweera’s debut novel, “Island of a Thousand Mirror” was

long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize and the Dublin IMPAC Prize.
It won the Commonwealth Regional Prize for Asia and was short-listed
for the Northern California Book Award. Publishers Weekly wrote,
Munaweeras lyrical debut novel is worthy of shelving alongside her
countryman Michael Ondaatje or her fellow writer of the
multigenerational immigrant experience, Jhumpa Lahiri. The New York
Times Book review called the novel, incandescent.
Nayomi’s second novel, “What Lies Between Us” was released in
February 2016 and had received accolades as one of 2016s most
anticipated books.
Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of two bestselling, award-winning

novels, “Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close”, and a bestselling work of nonfiction, “Eating Animals”. He lives
in Brooklyn, New York.

Sara Gruen

Sara Gruen is the #1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author
of five novels: “At The Water’s Edge”, “Ape House”, “Water for
Elephants”, “Riding Lessons”, and “Flying Changes”. Her works have
been translated into forty-three languages, and have sold more than ten
million copies worldwide. WATER FOR ELEPHANTS was adapted into
a major motion picture starring Reese Witherspoon, Rob Pattinson, and
Christoph Waltz in 2011.

Margaret Atwood

Canadian author Margaret Atwood has numerous critically acclaimed

novels to her credit. Some of her best-selling titles are "Oryx and Crake"
(2003), "The Handmaid's Tale" (1986), and "The Blind Assassin" (2000).
She is best known for her feminist and dystopian political themes, and
her prolific output of work spans multiple genres, including poetry, short
stories, and essays. She distinguishes her "speculative fiction" from
science fiction because "science fiction has monsters and spaceships;
speculative fiction could really happen."
Valeria Luiselli

Award winning, translated into numerous languages, Luiselli’s playful,

mesmeric novels, have pushed the boundaries of distortion between the
real and the imagined. Works such as “Faces In The Crowd” (2012) and
“The Story Of My Teeth” (2015) have seen her cast as one of the bright
lights of contemporary Mexican fiction, and her collection of non-fiction
essays, “Sidewalks” (2013), demonstrates the versatility and deft touch
of an interesting new literary talent.

Carmen Boullosa

Poet, playwright, and novelist, Carmen Boullosa’s thoughtful and eclectic

works such as “Leaving Tabasco” (2001), and “Texas: The Great Theft”
(2014), have cemented the reputation of a writer considered to be
reaching the height of her powers. Weaving through a wide range of
topics, and eras, Boullosa’s imaginative power and craft have allowed
her to jump from one project to another,
without being typecast or pigeon holed.
Ian McEwan

British writer Ian McEwan started winning literary awards with his first
book, a collection of short stories, "First Love, Last Rites" (1976) and
never stopped. "Atonement" (2001), a family drama focused on
repentance, won several awards and was made into a movie directed by
Joe Wright (2007). "Saturday" (2005) won the James Tait Black
Memorial Prize. His work often focuses on closely observed personal
lives in a politically fraught world.

David Mitchell

English novelist is known for his frequent use of intricate and complex
experimental structure in his work. In his first novel, "Ghostwritten"
(1999), he uses nine narrators to tell the story, and 2004's "Cloud Atlas"
is a novel comprising six interconnected stories. Mitchell won the John
Llewellyn Rhys Prize for "Ghostwritten," was shortlisted for the Booker
Prize for "number9dream" (2001), and was on the Booker longlist for
"The Bone Clocks" (2014).
Zadie Smith
Literary critic James Wood coined the term "hysterical realism" in 2000
to describe Zadie Smith's hugely successful debut novel, "White Teeth,"
which Smith agreed was a "painfully accurate term for the sort of
overblown, manic prose to be found in novels like my own 'White Teeth.'"
The British novelist and essayist's third novel, "On Beauty," was
shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the 2006 Orange Prize for
Fiction. Her 2012 novel "NW" was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and
the Women's Prize for Fiction. Her works often deal with race and the
immigrant's postcolonial experience.
Delphine de Vigan

Delphine de Vigan is an award-winning French novelist. She has

published several novels for adults. Her breakthrough work was the book
“No et moi” (No and Me) that was awarded the Prix des Libraires (The
Booksellers' Prize) in France in 2008.
In 2011, she published a novel “Rien ne s'oppose a la nuit” (Nothing
holds back the night) that deals with a family coping with their mother's
bipolar disorder. In her native France, the novel brought her a set of
awards, including the prix du roman Fnac (the prize given by the Fnac
bookstores) and the prix Renaudot des lycéens.

Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq (born Michel Thomas), on the French island of

Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French novelist. To
admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches
back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire; to detractors he is a
peddler, who writes vulgar sleazy literature to shock. His works though,
particularly Atomised, have received high praise from the French literary
intelligentsia, with generally positive international critical response.
Having written poetry and a biography of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft,
he brought out his first novel “Extension du domaine de la lute” in 1994.
“Les particules élémentaires” followed in 1998 and “Plateforme”, in 2001.
After a disastrous publicity tour for this book, which led to his being taken
to court for inciting racial hatred, he went to Ireland to write. He currently
resides in France, where he has been described as "France’s biggest
literary export and, some say, greatest living writer". In 2010 he
published “La Carte et le Territoire” (published the same year in English
as The Map and the Territory) which won the prestigious Prix Goncourt;
and, in 2015, Submission.
Isabel Allende
Isabel Allende Llona is a Chilean-American novelist. Allende, who writes
in the "magic realism" tradition, is considered one of the first successful
women novelists in Latin America. She has written novels based in part
on her own experiences, often focusing on the experiences of women,
weaving myth and realism together. Her best-known works include the
novels “The House of the Spirits and City of the Beasts”. She has written
over 20 books that have been translated into more than 35 languages
and sold more than 67 million copies.

Gabriel García Márquez

Gabriel García Márquez (1927 to 2014) was a Colombian writer,

associated with the Magical Realism genre of narrative fiction and
credited with reinvigorating Latin American writing. He won the Nobel
prize for literature in 1982, for a body of work that included novels such
as "100 Years of Solitude" and "Love in the Time of Cholera."

Mario Vargas Llosa

Mario Vargas Llosa is Peru's foremost author and the winner of the 2010
Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1994 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize,
the Spanish-speaking world's most distinguished literary honor, and in
1995 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His many distinguished works include
“The Storyteller”, “The Feast of the Goat”, “Aunt Julia and the
Scriptwriter”, “Death in the Andes”, “In Praise of the Stepmother”, “The
Bad Girl”, “Conversation in the Cathedral”, “The Way to Paradise”, and
“The War of the End of the World”. He lives in London.
National Book Critics Circle Awards Winner.

Patricio Pron

Patricio Pron, born in 1975, is the author of seven novels and six story
collections, and he also works as a translator and critic. His fiction has
appeared in Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and The Paris Review, and he
has received numerous prizes, including the Alfaguara Prize, the Juan
Rulfo Prize, the Premio Literario Jaén de Novela award, and the 2008
José Manuel Lara Foundation Award for one of the five best works
published in Spain that year. He was named one of the best young
Spanish-language novelists by Granta in 2010. His latest novel, “My
Fathers’ Ghost Is Climbing in the Rain”, was recently published in
Vintage paperback.
Rodrigo Hasbún

Rodrigo Hasbún is a Bolivian novelist living and working in Houston,

Texas. In 2007, he was selected by the Hay Festival as one of the best
Latin American writers under the age of thirty-nine for Bogotá39, and in
2010 he was named one of Grantas Best Young Spanish-Language
Novelists. He is the author of three novels, a volume of personal essays,
and three collections of short stories, two of which have been made into
films. His work has appeared in Granta, McSweeneys, Zoetrope: All-
Story, Words Without Borders, and elsewhere. Affections received an
English PEN Award and has been published in twelve languages.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria.

Her work has been translated into over thirty languages and has
appeared in various publications, including The New Yorker, Granta, The
O. Henry Prize Stories, the Financial Times, and Zoetrope. She is the
author of the novels “Purple Hibiscus”, which won the Commonwealth
Writers Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; “Half of a Yellow
Sun”, which won the Orange Prize and was a National Book Critics Circle
Award Finalist and a New York Times Notable Book; and “Americanah”,
which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one
of The New York Times Top Ten Best Books of 2013. Ms. Adichie is also
the author of the story collection “The Thing Around Your Neck”.

Aminatta Forna

Born in Glasgow but raised in Sierra Leone, Aminatta Forna first drew
attention for her memoir “The Devil That Danced on Water” (2003), an
extraordinarily brave account of her family’s experiences living in war-
torn Sierra Leone, and in particular her father’s tragic fate as a political
dissident. Forna has gone on to write several novels, each of them
critically acclaimed: her work “The Memory of Love” (2010) juxtaposes
personal stories of love and loss within the wider context of the
devastation of the Sierre Leone civil war,and was nominated for the
Orange Prize for Fiction.

Nadine Gordimer
One of the apartheid era’s most prolific writers, Nadine Gordimer’s works
powerfully explore social, moral, and racial issues in a South Africa under
apartheid rule. Despite winning a Nobel Prize in Literature for her
prodigious skills in portraying a society interwoven with racial tensions,
Gordimer’s most famous and controversial works were banned from
South Africa for daring to speak out against the oppressive governmental
structures of the time. Her novel “Burger’s Daughter” follows the
struggles of a group of anti-apartheid activists, and was read in secret by
Nelson Mandela during his time on Robben Island.

Alain Mabanckou

Alain Mabanckou was born in 1966 in Congo-Brazzaville (French

Congo). He currently resides in Los Angeles, where he teaches literature
at UCLA, having previously spent four years at the University of
Michigan. Mabanckou will be a Fellow in the Humanities Council at
Princeton University in 2007-2008. One of Francophone Africa's most
prolific contemporary writers, he is the author of six volumes of poetry
and six novels. He received the Sub-Saharan Africa Literary Prize in
1999 for his first novel, “Blue-White-Red”, “The Prize of the Five
Francophone Continents for Broken Glass”, and the “Prix Renaudot” in
2006 for “Memoirs of a Porcupine”. He was selected by the French
publishing trade journal Lire as one of the fifty writers to watch out for in
the coming century. His most recent book is “African Psycho”.

Ben Okri

Poet and novelist Ben Okri was born in 1959 in Minna, Northern Nigeria,
to an Igbo mother and Urhobo father. He grew up in London before
returning to Nigeria with his family in 1968. Much of his early fiction
explores the political violence that he witnessed at first hand during the
civil war in Nigeria.
In 1991 Okri was awarded the Booker Prize for Fiction for his novel “The
Famished Road” (1991). Set in a Nigerian village, this is the first in a
trilogy of novels which tell the story of Azaro, a spirit child. Azaro's
narrative is continued in “Songs of Enchantment” (1993) and “Infinite
Riches” (1998). Other recent fiction includes “Astonishing the Gods”
(1995) and “Dangerous Love” (1996), which was awarded the Premio
Palmi (Italy) in 2000. His latest novels are “In Arcadia” (2002) and
“Starbook” (2007).