Chinese writer Su Tong has won Asia's top literary prize with a bleak novel about a disgraced Communist Party official's attempts to rebuild his life, trumping a clutch of Indian writers on the shortlist. Su's novel, “The Boat to Redemption” is about a womanising Party official who castrates himself after being banished to a river barge with his young son just after the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. It won the Man Asian Literary prize, the regional equivalent of the Man Booker prize. The panel of three judges, including Indian writer Pankaj Mishra and Irish writer Colm Toibin, described Su's novel as a picaresque, political fable as well as “a parable about the journeys we take in our lives, the distance between the boat of our desires and the dry land of our achievement.” Su is best known for his novella “Wives and Concubines”, written in 1989 and which was adapted into the art-house favourite and Oscar-nominated film, “Raise the Red Lantern”, by Zhang Yimou. He has written six novels including 2006's “Rice and My Life as Emperor”. The Man Asian Literary Prize aims to recognise the region's top writers and give them a platform to reach an international audience. It is awarded annually to a work not yet published into English.
