DrMKZ

The Booker Prize Foundation is like the Oscars night for writers. Tan Twan Eng, for the first time,a Malaysian has been shortlisted. The Booker Prize comes with a 50 000 pound prize, equivalent to RM 250 000. More importantly is the recognition of the work, and sales increase at every stage of the selection process.

Tan Twen Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mist is shorlisted in the Man Booker Prize this year, and his first novel The Gift of Rain was in the long-listed in 2007.

I find his statement is very true, he said ” If you are serious about having a writing career, you have to be published in the United Kingdom  or the United States, the publishing capitals of the English -speaking world.”

It is also very interesting that, Tan is a product of another ordinary Malaysian school. He did not attend a private fancy English school.

He also noted that, he writes from nine to five. Pandering to the western taste, so what?