September 25, 2001

2001 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize Announces Finalists
Winners of $30,000 Prize to be named October 20 in Vancouver

San Francisco--The judges have selected 10 finalists for the 6th annual Kiriyama Prize, a US $30,000 award to be shared by a nonfiction and a fiction winner. The two winning authors will be announced on "Sedge Thomson's West Coast Live" radio program Saturday, October 20, 10 AM to 12 noon PST, from the Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival (broadcast on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco).

A total of 301 eligible books were entered for the Kiriyama Prize this year. In accordance with Prize rules, the books entered for the prize cover a broad range of Pacific bordering countries and also South Asia, which has been included in the prize's parameters since last year.

The Kiriyama Book Prize was established in 1996 as an annual award for a single book that would encourage 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 winner and a nonfiction winner have been awarded since 1999.

The fiction finalists:

• The Ash Garden by Dennis Bock (Toronto: HarperCollins). A sensitively told, powerful anti-war novel paralleling the permanently scarred lives of Emiko Amai, a Japanese-American filmmaker, whose entire family was killed in the bombing of Hiroshima, and of Anton Bİll, a morally torn and emotionally crippled scientist, who worked on the development of the bomb at Los Alamos.
• Dogside Story, by Patricia Grace (Auckland: Penguin Books New Zealand, forthcoming from University of Hawai'i Press in spring 2002 in the US). Set in rural New Zealand at the approach of the new millennium, Grace's authentic characters reveal not only the long-term divisive effects of colonial land division and cultural oppression on the Maori people but also the strength of the traditions that still tie them together. Beloved in New Zealand, but not as well known elsewhere, this is Maori author Grace's fifth novel.
• Here's to You, Jesusa!, by Elena Poniatowska, translated by Deanna Heikkinen (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux). Originally published in 1969 but available only now in English translation, this passionate novel by Mexican author and journalist Poniatowska portrays the life story of Jesusa, a poor but resourceful and independent woman in Oaxaca in the late 1800s. A picaresque tale of survival and a critical look at the Mexican Revolution, and at state and church corruption.
• American Son, by Brian Ascalon Roley (New York: WW Norton). A gritty but accomplished first novel about two Filipino-American brothers growing up in contemporary California and their respective struggles to accept their heritage. Tomas models himself on a Mexican gangster and opts for theft and violence, Gabe tries to flee his brother's brutal ways but can't get far from his family.
• The Death of Vishnu, by Manil Suri (New York: WW Norton). This debut novel chronicles a community of quarrelsome families living in a multi-level, segregated apartment building-a metaphor for modern India, where the story is placed. Vishnu, an old, ailing, and destitute man, who lives on the landing, is witness to the apartment dwellers' daily lives. With humor and compassion Suri renders Vishnu's death scene as both Hindu mythology and as a Bollywood movie.

The nonfiction finalists:

• Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Ghandi, by Katherine Frank (London: HarperCollins UK, forthcoming in Spring 2002 from Houghton Mifflin Company in the US). Frank's well-wrought biography of India's only woman prime minister portrays Indira Ghandi as a strong-willed, ruthless, and tragic figure. The only child of Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, Indira set out to uphold his inclusive vision for her homeland. Frank shows how instead Indira became a reviled despot, and left India a damaged country.
• River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, by Peter Hessler (New York: HarperCollins). A poignant, sometimes hilarious memoir from a Peace Corps volunteer who spent 1996-68 teaching English literature in Fuling, a small city on the Yangtze River. While allowing the voices of the rural Chinese themselves to resonate through his own narrative, Hessler's own keen observations provide a fresh perspective on a tumultuous period in Chinese culture and politics.
• Red Dust, by Ma Jian, translated by Flora Drew (London: Chatto & Windus, forthcoming from Pantheon Books in November 2001 in the US). In what one of the Kiriyama Prize judges dubbed, "A Chinese On the Road," poet and artist Ma Jian tells the story of his difficult trek through the Chinese hinterland as a young man, from 1983-86. In joining the author on his arduous journey, undertaken to escape from political and domestic pressures, we glimpse a side of China seldom seen or written about.
• Inside Passage: A Journey Beyond Borders, by Richard Manning (Washington, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books). There are two underlying messages in this engaging and unconventional travelogue by award-winning journalist Manning. The first is a challenge to stop runaway development in the Pacific Northwest United States and Canada. The second is a call for rethinking the established ways of protecting natural resources.
• Perpetual Happiness: The Ming Emperor, by Shih-Shan Henry Tsai (Seattle: University of Washington Press). A colorful historical biography of one of the most revered emperors of China and a vivid portrait of life during the Ming dynasty. Scholar Tsai's lively writing will infect even non-scholarly audiences with his own evident enthusiasm for his subject.

The Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize is cosponsored by the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Institute and the University of San Francisco Center for the Pacific Rim. For information about the prize, visit www.pacificrimvoices.org or call (415) 777 1628.

PRESS CONTACT
Elizabeth Whipple
usapress@kiriyamaprize.org