Celebrating Literary Voices of the Pacific Rim

2005 KIRIYAMA PRIZE WINNERS

for Fiction

Maps for Lost Lovers
Nadeem Aslam

Eleven years in the making, Nadeem Aslam’s novel, Maps for Lost Lovers, is both a moving love story and a sophisticated murder mystery populated by fully realized characters. Set against the backdrop of a poor South Asian enclave in a British city, the story centers on Kaukab, a pious Muslim wife and mother who relies on her faith to ease her feelings of estrangement from her homeland of Pakistan and from her husband and westernized children. The murder of Kaukab’s brother-in-law and his live-in girlfriend puts in motion a year of cataclysmic change and exposes the roots of spiritual, political, racial, and interpersonal tensions that shake the community.

A review in The Observer (UK) said of Maps, “Despite the violence that lies at the heart of the novel, it is a celebration of love and life. Sights and sounds, smells and colors are not so much vivid backdrops for the narrative as structural, mood-and-texture-enhancing parts of it. Rarely does Aslam put a foot wrong. This is that rare sort of book that gives a voice to those whose voices are seldom heard.”

In a recent interview, Nadeem Aslam said, “The book can be seen as an overview of race in Britain over the past 50 years. During the writing of it I lived in various cities and towns but always within the Asian neighborhoods – the air there seemed rich with relevant stories, so much so that at times I felt that all I had to do as a writer was to provide surfaces for those stories to coalesce onto like dew on the petals of a flower.” Aslam was born in Pakistan and now lives in London. He is the author of one previous novel, Season of the Rainbirds, which was recognized by several British literary awards. Maps for Lost Lovers was also longlisted for the coveted Man Booker Prize.

Maps for Lost Lovers is available from the following publishers:

UK
Faber & Faber
ISBN 0571221807

USA
Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN 1400042429

for Nonfiction

Maximum City:
Bombay Lost and Found
Suketu Mehta

In Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found journalist Suketu Mehta returns to Bombay, the city of his birth, to find it drastically altered from the city he once knew, in large part as result of the religious massacres and violence between Hindu and Muslim populations in 1993. To put a human face on the world's third largest city, Mehta skillfully weaves a narrative encompassing his own experiences and impressions together with a series of personal interviews with a variety of Bombay’s citizens. Shunning no point of view, he meets with gangsters and their victims, cops and the rich, Bollywood entertainers, and prostitutes alike. The resulting book is a surprisingly empathetic, fascinating, and revealing group portrait. Susan Saidenberg, one of the judges for nonfiction and director of exhibitions and programs at the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York said, “This big, well-written mosaic should be mandatory reading for anyone wishing to understand the giant at the heart of India, as well as every reader who wishes to gain a deeper appreciation of the religious, and political concerns that divide India and her neighbors.”

Suketu Mehta is a fiction writer and journalist based in New York. For his fiction he has won the Whiting Writers’ Award, the O. Henry Prize, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. His work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, Granta, Harper’s, Time, Conde Nast Traveler and The Village Voice. He has been featured on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and he was co-writer of “Mission Kashmir,” a Bollywood movie. He is currently working on a book for young people.

Maximum City is available from the following publishers:

India
Penguin Books
ISBN: 0670049212

United Kingdom
Review/Hodder Headline
ISBN: 0747221596

USA
Alfred A. Knopf
ISBN: 0375403728 (hardcover)
Vintage Books
ISBN: 0375703403 (paperback)
US paperback edition to be released September 2005.

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2005 KIRIYAMA PRIZE WINNERS

Maps for Lost Lovers Nadeem Aslam

Maps for Lost Lovers
Nadeem Aslam