Canadian Thien, Booker winner Desai shortlisted for Kiriyama Prize

First-time Canadian novelist Madeleine Thien will battle it out against Man Booker Prize-winner Kiran Desai for next month's Kiriyama Prize, organizers announced from San Francisco Tuesday.

Thien's debut novel Certainty is among the finalists for the Pacific Rim literary prize, which annually awards $15,000 US each to a fiction and non-fiction author, with the two winners being announced March 27.

Aside from Desai, nominated for The Inheritance of Loss, Thien's competition includes:

• Chinese dissident author Ma Jian's short story collection Stick Out Your Tongue.
• Japanese author Haruki Murakami's short story collection Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman.
• U.S. author Lois-Ann Yamanaka's novel Behold the Many.

This year's Kiriyama finalists for non fiction are:

• The Haiku Apprentice, U.S. diplomat Abigail Friedman's glimpse into Japanese culture through her membership in a poetry group.
• Blonde Indian, Ernestine Hayes' memoir of growing up in a Tlingit community in Alaska.
• Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson's bestseller about his efforts to build a school in a remote Pakistan village (co-written with David Oliver Relin).
• Tigers in Red Weather, Charles Darwin descendant Ruth Padel's plea to save the tiger from extinction.
• Chinese Lessons, journalist John Pomfret's exploration into the lives of his former Nanjing University classmates since China's Cultural Revolution.

"This year's shortlists present a particularly interesting blend of 'insider' and 'outsider' voices," said Jeannine Stronach, the Kiriyama's prize manager.

"Read as a group, the 10 books … present a rich chorus of perspectives that we hope readers everywhere will listen to intently and discuss widely."

Sponsored by Pacific Rim Voices, a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, the annual prize honours books about or set in the nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia. While organizers accept books by authors anywhere in the world, submissions must be written or translated into English and have been published in the U.S. or Canada.

Past Canadian winners include Rohinton Mistry for Family Matters, Michael Ondaatje for Anil's Ghost and David Michael Kwan for Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China.