Judges' comments
From Nury Vittachi:
The Complete Stories is a rich feast of original tales that sum up the intense joys and sadnesses that fill even the most ordinary of lives—all the judges were moved by it. David Malouf's characters are inconsistent, unpredictable and complex—just like real human beings. And his plots are subtle, surprising and follow no formulas. As a result, his stories are quiet explorations of real life, far removed from the usual simple, creaking fictional worlds offered by most authors.
The other books on the shortlist were also magnificent.
Orpheus Lost by Janette Turner Hospital is a fabulous work that succeeds in simultaneously being a thriller, a fable, an exploration of modern issues, a classic with mythic themes, and a first class piece of literary fiction. And it's a fun read—what more could anyone want?
The Lost Dog by Michelle De Kretser is a remarkable re-creation of the lives of a small group of friends that is extraordinarily deep and detailed, slow-burning but intensely vivid.
Blood Kin by Ceridwan Dovey is a dramatic, arresting and highly original work—a short, startling exploration of a military coup in an unnamed country, which each chapter seen through the eyes of a different participant or victim. It's a strange and marvelously memorable work.
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid is a highly impressive, beautifully sustained monologue, in which a young Asian relates his journey from being an immigrant New York financier to becoming an angry Pakistani militant.
This award is unique on the planet. The majority of the world's consumers—almost two thirds—are in the Asia-Pacific region. They are already growing dissatisfied with imported fiction from the UK and the US. They're demanding stories from this region, so the AALA gives us a glimpse at the future of the next generation of entertainment. The proportion of movies and games based on books is growing rapidly. The establishment of this award is an extraordinarily far-sighted move to make Western Australia a major creative hub for Asia-Pacific, and thus for the world.
From Peter Craven:
It's been a fascinating procedure to look at writing from Asia and Australia as part of the same continuum. We have ended up giving the award to one of this country's best known writers of fiction, David Malouf, for what is effectively a lifetime's mastery of the short story form, and that is a very satisfactory result, not least because my two fellow judges are from different parts of Asia and come to his work without preconceptions.
But there was very stiff competition: Janette Turner Hospital's Orpheus Lost, a brilliant and exciting novel about ghosts of terrorism spawning spectres of rogue anti-terrorism; Mohsin Hamid's curving stair monologue The Reluctant Fundamentalist, about a man who us driven to extremism by his refusal to be conquered by the seductions of America; Ceridwen Dovey—still in her twenties—with her tinglingly intense allegory of tyranny Blood Kin; and Michelle De Kretser's densely literary The Lost Dog about redeeming the shameful and half-alien past.
In practice, we looked at writing from everywhere. We shortlisted everyone from Coetzee to Murakami. It is to the very great credit of the people of Western Australia that they have been willing to back an award so outward-looking and unparochial, so open not only to the rest of Australia, but to the rest of the world.
Western Australia welcomed Elizabeth Jolley and nurtured Tim Winton. Before too long, we'll no doubt see a Western Australian winner of this award. Just this year (but outside the ambit of our consideration for the award, which was confined to books published in 2007) we saw the publication of Tim Winton's Breath, which many would see as the outstanding novel of 2008. Western Australia has always punched above its weight in literature. The generosity of the Asia Australia award is further evidence of this.
From Kamila Shamsie:
David Malouf is a writer of rare genius. Within the demands of the short story form he can give us a world containing a complex melange of characters, or he can take a single, seemingly insignificant moment and show all the depth and possibility it contains within it. There is tremendous power to his writing—regardless of whether he is describing a boys' encounter with nature of a woman's experience of heartbreak. His prose, ungilded with ornamentation or showiness, shines like a blade in the darkness.
