Sure the Shanghai International Literary Festival doesn't actually start until March, but books take quite a while to read (even if you're speed readers, like us). That's probably why the M Restaurant Group has wasted no time getting us the almost completely confirmed list of books and authors appearing at this years readings - stick your nose in any one of these 40+ tomes so you'll actually have something to discuss when one of your personal writing heroes (like say... Peter Hessler or Su Tong) come into town.
Oh yes, M's also taking the time to give us little intros to the authors as well. Here's some they wanted to highlight:
Junot Diaz: "Born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, Junot Diaz is the Pulitizer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which the New York Times called "an extraordinarily vibrant book, fueled by adrenaline-powered prose," and Drown, a collection of short stories based on his life in the Dominican Republic and the United States.
His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, African Voices, Best American Short Stories, in Pushcart Prize XXII and in The O'Henry Prize Stories 2009. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Junot Diaz is the fiction editor at the Boston Review and the Rudge (1948) and Nancy Allen professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology."
Yuan-tsung Chen:"Shanghai native Yuan-tsung Chen grew up living on the edge of the French Concession, attending American missionary schools. Inculcated with the belief that "noblesse oblige demanded that an educated person use his knowledge to serve the people," she remained in China after the 1949 Revolution, lived and worked in poverty-stricken rural areas in the 1950s,and later became an editor and translator at Beijing's Film Publishing House.
Her current book, Return to the Middle Kingdom: One Family, Three Revolutionaries and the Birth of Modern China, tells the remarkable story of Ah Chen, a landless peasant who joined the Taiping Rebellion, his son, Eugene Chen, Sun Yat-sen's closest aide and his son (and Yuan Tsung's husband) Jack Chen, who met Mao in 1927 and "served the revolution" in China and abroad."
Moses Isegawa:"Born in Cawente, northern Uganda in 1963, Moses Isegawa spent 10 years in the seminary. He taught secondary school history for four years, leaving for the Netherlands in 1990.
His first novel, the highly acclaimed Abyssinian Chronicles, describes the chaotic swirl of life in Idi Amin's Uganda through the fortunes of one family. Snakepit, his second book, centers around native son Bat Katanga, who returns to Amin's Uganda after an education abroad. Moses Isegawa now lives in Uganda."
Look for new updates on the literary festival website (www.m-literaryfestival.com) and the full list of authors (as of December 15th) that will be appearing after the jump.
1. Tash Aw The Harmony Silk Factory (Whitbread First Novel award, Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel)
2. Terry Bennett The History of Photography in China
3. Sarah Brennan [children] Tale of Oswald Ox, Run Run Rat, Chester Choi and the Dragon
4. Andre Brink A Dry White Season, Other Lives (2008) and numerous other novels
5. Lars Bukdahl Alphabets from Pluto, Danish poet
6. Dario Castagno Too Much Tuscan Sun: Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide; A Day in Tuscany: More Confessions of a Chianti Tour Guide; Too Much Tuscan Wine.
7. Leslie Chang Factory Girls.
8. Yuan Tsung Chen Return to the Middle Kingdom: One Family, Three Revolutionaries and the Birth of Modern China.
9. Jose Dalisay Soledad’s Sister (2008), shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize
10. Junot Diaz The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao [Pulitzer]; Drown
11. Charles Emmerson The Future of the Arctic [geopolitics]
12. Andrew Field Shanghai’s Dancing World: Cabaret Culture and Urban Politics, 1919- 1954. (2010)
13. Shamini Flint Inspector Singh series - A Most Peculiar Malaysian Murder; Bali Conspiracy Most Foul + children’s series: Sasha visits various countries in Asia.
14. Morris Gleitzman [children] Toad Surprise; Give Peas a Chance, etc.
15. David Grossman The Yellow Wind (nonfiction study of Palestinans in Israeli occupied Gaza and West Bank); Someone to Run with, Her Body Knows (fiction)
16. Ram Guha (named one of the world’s top 100 public intellectuals by Foreign Policy) India After Gandhi
17. Peter Hessler River Town; Oracle Bones; Driving Lessons (2010)
18. Moses Isegawa Abyssian Chronicles; Cobra’s Impunity
19. Linda Jaivin A Most Immoral Woman [historic fiction] (a fictionalized account of George Morrisson’s affair with Mae Perkins)
20. Ritta Jalonen [teenage fiction] The Nights of the Angels, Girl and the Jackda Tree
21. Tess Johnston Permanently Temporary: From Berlin to Shanghai in Half a Century (2010).
22. Hitomi Kanehara Snakes & Earrings; Ash Baby
23. Hyejin Kim Jia A novel of North Korea.
24. Rachel Kushner Telex from Cuba.
25. Mandla Langa Lost Colours of the Chameleon (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2009 for Africa)
26. David Leffman Rough Guides China author
27. Margaret Read MacDonald [children]
28. Garry Marchant The Peace Correspondent (A journalist’s tales of travels around Asia)
29. Francesca Marciano-Cassa Rossa The End of Manners, screenplays for a number of films.
30. Frank Moorhouse Palais des Nations Trilogy, Grand Days, Dark Palace (winner of Miles Franklin Literary Award), Martini: A Memoir
31. Mo Zhi Hong The Year of the Shanghai Shark (Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book)
32. Les Murray The Biplane Houses “one of the greatest contemporary poets writing in English”
33. Chen Murong Leave Me Alone Chengdu (a gritty novel about young Chinese in 90s)
34. Elizabeth O’Donoghue (Irish performance poet)
35. Kristin Bair O’Keeffe Thirsty
36. James Palmer The Bloody White Baron
37. Emily Perkins Novel About My Wife
38. Schatz + Blackrose [children]
39. Asne Sierestad The Bookseller of Kabul
40. Sjön The Blue Fox (nominated for independent Foreign Fiction award)
41. Su Tong Rice Wives and Concubines (adapted to Raise the Red Lantern); My Life as Emperor. 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize for The Boat to Redemption (not yet published)
42. Alice Pung Unpolished Gem Young Cambodian-Chinese migrant’s coming-of-age memoir
43. Billy Ramsell Complicated Pleasures (Irish poet)
44. Alan Titley Beyond the Knacker’s Yard
45. Donata & Christoph Valentien Shanghai’s New Botanic Garden
46. Nury Vittachi Feng Shui Detective series
47. Alexis Wright Carpentaria
