Image created by Matt Todd of A Novel Approach

Week 8 of our Shadow Man Asian Literary Prize 2011 longlist reviewing project and we now have only a few days to the shortlist announcement on January 10. This week’s reviews are:

• Tahmima Anam’s The good Muslim (Bangladesh) by Fay of Read, Ramble. She says “it is beautifully structured, the story well told, the characters alive” and believes it will be one of the short-listed novels. We’ll soon know!
• Tahmina Anam’s The good Muslim (Bangladesh) by Mark of Eleutherophobia. He concurs with Fay and our other reviewers that it is a strong contender for the shortlist. He calls it “a brave and important book”.
• Jahnavi Barua’s Rebirth (India) by Stu of winstonsdad. Stu makes a great point about its universality, which makes me keen to read it … but this book has been one of the two most difficult of the longlist to track down.
• Rahul Bhattachariya’s The sly company of people who care (India) by Lisa of ANZLitLovers. She says that “this is a remarkably clever book; I’m not surprised that it won the Hindu Literary Prize.”
• Mahmoud Dowlatabadi’s The colonel (Iran) by Fay of Read, Ramble. She found it an intense read, “a powerful book. Overpowering”. I feel this is one I should read.
• Tarun Tejpal’s The valley of masks (India) by Matt of A Novel Approach. He loved it but called it “the black sheep of the list”. Now that’s got me intrigued!
• Banana Yoshimoto’s The lake (Japan) by Mark of Eleutherophobia. He’s not greatly enamoured saying it “drowns in introspection and self-doubt” but he says he’d read another Yoshimoto (so it’s clearly not all bad!)

Other Shadow Man Asian news

• The shortlist will be announced next week, on January 10th … watch our spaces!
• I have made it easier for you to find all our reviews now by creating a page listing the books in alphabetical order by author, with links to our team members’ reviews. Click on the Man Asian Literary Prize page tab or our Shadow Man Asian Logo in my sidebar to access the list.
• If you missed it, I posted my third review this week:  Jamil Ahmad’s The wandering falcon. I do hope that one of two of those I’ve read make the shortlist!