Sunday September 24, 2006
Wanted: Fresh insights
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Toby Eady ... readers ready for more. |
“Please, not another book about the second world war or Khartoum,” he says. “We don’t need to dwell in the past. Readers are ready for more. They are open to reading about the real Asia, the Asia that is in the present.”
Eady is literary agent to best-selling and critically acclaimed authors like Bernard Cornwell and Rachel Seiffert, and he has knowledge of and passion for Asian literature. He represents names like Adeline Yen Mah, Xinran, Zhu Wen and Hong Ying and was the agent for Jung Chang’s Wild Swans.
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Daniel Watts ... books on the real Asia. |
“We are looking for Asian voices – writers of contemporary novels,” says Daniel Watts, managing director of Pan Macmillan Asia. “Toby is on board to help us source for Asian works of quality and we hope to build Picador Asia as a brand that is associated with Asian writing of a high literary standard.”
Watts adds that the imprint will acquire and translate established works from China and other East Asian countries, but also hopes to discover new authors, Asian or otherwise, who can offer fresh insights and perspectives on Asian life.
Picador Asia’s lead title is February Flowers, the debut novel of China-born and California-based Fan Wu. Other titles on the new imprint’s list include The Eye of Jade, Diane Wei Ling’s detective novel, set in contemporary Beijing; Lucky Girls, Nell Freudenberger’s collection of short stories set in India and southern Asia; The Perpetual Three Gorges, Yun Feng Zheng’s illustrated non-fiction work on the Yangtze River's Three Gorges; and China Dreams, a novel, by Sid Smith that delves deep into the heart of London’s Chinese immigrant population. – By DAPHNE LEE
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