2008 Kiriyama Prize Notable Book List

"The Kiriyama Prize was established in 1996 to recognize outstanding books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia that encourage greater mutual understanding of and among the peoples and nations of this vast and culturally diverse region."

The Prize publishes an annual list of notable books in the fiction and nonfiction categories, which are also drawn from the judging process.

2008 Notable List

Fiction

• My South Seas Sleeping Beauty by Guixing Zhang, translated by Valerie Jaffee (Columbia University Press)
• Bird of Another Heaven by James D. Houston (Knopf)
• Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt (Bloomsbury)
• God of Luck by Ruthanne Lum McCunn (Soho)
• The Ocean in the Closet by Yuko Tanigushi (Coffee House Press)
• The Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux (Houghton Mifflin)
• The Assassin's Song by M. G. Vassanji (Doubleday Canada; Knopf USA)

Nonfiction

• The Lost Coast: Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture by Tim Bowling (Nightwood Editions, Canada)
• Hapa Girl: A Memoir by May-lee Chai (Temple University Press)
• Earth in Flower by Paul Cravath (DatAsia)
• Revolution of Hope: The Life, Faith, and Dreams of a Mexican President by Vicente Fox and Rob Allyn (Viking)
• China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power by Rob Gifford (Random House)
• Confessions: An Innocent Life in Communist China by Kang Zhenguo, translated by Susan Wilf (W.W. Norton)
• The Thorn of Lion City by Lucy Lum (Perseus)
• The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie (Simon & Schuster)
• Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen (Penguin)
• Under the Dragon: California's New Culture by Lonny Shavelson and Fred Setterberg (Heyday Books)
• Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age in South Korea's Prisons by Cullen Thomas (Penguin)
• Beijing Confidential: A Tale of Comrades Lost and Found by Jan Wong (Doubleday Canada)

Notable Children's Books

• Hiromi's Hands written and illustrated by Lynne Barasch (Lee & Low)
• Surfer of the Century: The Life of Duke Kahanamoku by Ellie Crowe, illustrated by Richard Waldrep (Lee & Low)