Pacific Rim Voices announced the winners of the 2007 Kiriyama Prize last week, and here they are:
Fiction
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, by Haruki Murakami (Knopf)
Nonfiction
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time, by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin (Viking)
Interestingly, the subtitle of the nonfiction winner was different when Booklist received it in galley form: One Man’s Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations…One School at a Time. (And that’s how both hardcover and paperback are cataloged on Books in Print; OCLC has the harcover as “peace” and the paperback as “terrorism”; Amazon has both as “peace”. Terrorism or peace? Make up your minds!)
And, ironically, it’s the first time that a Japanese national has won the Kiriyama, which “is awarded annually in recognition of outstanding books that promote greater understanding of and among the nations of the Pacific Rim and of South Asia.”
(Wait, is that true irony or mere coincidence?)
Notables included Cellophane, by Marie Arana (Dial); The Weather Makers, by Tim Flannery (Grove/Atlantic); and Mishima’s Sword, by Christopher Ross (Da Capo).
