Contenders for Asia book prize out Friday

HONG KONG (AFP) - Book lovers across Asia will be on the lookout Friday when the contenders for a new prize for Asian literature are announced -- but only unpublished works are eligible.

The inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize, backed by the company that sponsors the prestigious Booker prize, will unveil the long-list of about 20 candidates for the 10,000 US dollar award.

"The objective is to make Asian literature more accessible," said Peter Gordon, the prize's chairman.

"We want to bring new Asian authors to the attention of the world literary community and highlight Asia's developing role in world literature," he said.

Only unpublished works are accepted for consideration -- either written in or translated into English -- and Gordon said there had been 240 submissions.

"We have works from just about every country," he said. "The submissions were actually better than we had projected in terms of numbers... better than we had reason to hope."

Leading Sri Lankan-born novelist Nury Vittachi sparked a row earlier this year when he criticised a failure to choose Asian judges for the prize as "racially insensitive."

The panel at the time consisted of mostly Western males but has since been changed to include ethnic Chinese Canadian Adrienne Clarkson, a former governor general of Canada, mixed-race Australian Nicholas Jose and Egyptian Andre Aciman.

Still, Vittachi was not satisfied. "I know them all and none of them are really Asian -- they don't even live in Asia," he said in February.

But Gordon was unconcerned, saying, "we've got diversity in all the aspects (of the judges' background)."

The five short-listed candidates will be announced in October before the prize is awarded on November 10.