Three Sisters by Bi Feiyu has won the Man Asian Literary Prize,
which honors "the best novel by an Asian writer, either written in
English or translated into English," of the past year. Bi Feiyu, a
novelist, poet, screenwriter and former newspaperman, received a $30,000
award, and translators Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin shared a
$5,000 award.
The judges--Monica Ali, Homi K. Bhabha and Hsu-Ming Teo--called Three Sisters
"a moving exploration of Chinese family and village life during the
Cultural Revolution that moves seamlessly between the epic and the
intimate, the heroic and the petty, illuminating not only individual
lives but an entire society, within a gripping tale of familial conflict
and love."
This marks the third time in the four years since the
prize's founding in 2007 that a Chinese author has won. Howard
Goldblatt has been a translator for all three winning Chinese novels.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt published Three Sisters here last August. It is also publishing one of the finalists, The Thing About Thugs by Tabish Khair, next spring.