A new and innovative literary prize will be launched later this year with a cash payment prize to rival the Man Booker. The Western Australian Premier’s Australia-Asia Literary Award (AALA) is worth A$110,000 (£53,000) and will be awarded for cutting-edge novels designed to be read on mobile phones and computers, as well as traditional books, set in Asia or Australia.
This is a tremendous opportunity for promoting awareness of books available through new media. In Japan, many of the recent top bestsellers were written on mobile phones and designed to be read on tiny screens. Readers in China also have an appetite for screen-published works. The cherry on the top of this exciting new development is Polygon author Nury Vittachi, who will be chairing a three-strong judging panel for the award.
‘This is an intriguing and original contest,’ said Vittachi, author of The Feng Shui Detective novels. ‘It shows that while America may be the dominant setting for the world’s stories up to now, it is time for stories set elsewhere in the world to take their rightful place on the global stage.’
Vittachi’s new novel, Mr Wong Goes West is now available from Polygon.
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