Five books have been shortlisted for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize - the first regional prize for a work unpublished in English.

The five candidates are Filipino Jose Dalisay Jr's Soledad's Sister, Indian Reeti Gadekar's Families at Home, Chinese Jiang Rong's Wolf Totem, Myanmar's Nu Nu Yi Inwa's Smile As They Bow and Habit of a Foreign Sky by Xu Xi, a Chinese-Indonesian native of Hong Kong.

Adrienne Clarkson, chair of the judging panel, said: "The diverse and outstanding finalists for the Man Asian Literary Prize are a revelation of fiction today in Asia.

"With an entrancing psychic geography, they challenge readers to an exhilarating discovery of ethical and imaginary worlds."

Sixty-one-year-old Jiang Rong was born in Jiangsu Province and joined the first wave of intellectuals who moved to the countryside as volunteers.

He lived on the border between Inner Mongolia of China and Mongolia for 11 years before returning to Beijing in 1978 to work as an academic.

Wolf Totem is a fictional account of life in the 1970s that draws on the author's personal experience of the grasslands in China's border region.

The book's English version is due to be published in March.

Penguin China, its publisher in foreign languages, is "extremely excited" about the book's entry, general manager Jo Lusby told China Daily.

Wolf Totem is Penguin's first purchase since the launch of its China office in 2005.

Its appearance on the shortlist will be a great help in promoting the book, because selling a Chinese book in Western markets is "very challenging and new", Lusby said.

She said of the story: "It introduces a very distant ethnic minority culture with a very strong storyline, featuring a lot of emotion and action, which is well suited for translation and will hopefully change Westerner's perceptions of Chinese books."

Xu Xi's book, Habit of a Foreign Sky, is set during the Asian financial crisis, and provides a snapshot of the tumultuous era and Sino-American relations of the times.

The prizewinner will be announced on November 10 at a ceremony in Hong Kong. The successful author will receive $10,000 with a further $3,000 going to the translator.

(China Daily 10/27/2007 page2)