Jeet Thayil in Man Asian Literary Prize shortlist

The five novels showcasing the diversity and depth of writing from Istanbul to Tokyo were announced in Hong Kong, listing distinctive and celebrated writers for the first time in a region-wide context.

The shortlist, which includes writers from five different countries, champions a debut novelist alongside a Nobel laureate, translated work as well as original writing in English, and includes smaller regional publishers as well as larger international houses.

The other shortlisted novels, selected from a longlist of 15, are "Between Clay and Dust" by Musharraf Ali Farooqi (Pakistan), "The Briefcase" by Hiromi Kawakami (Japan), "Silent House" by Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk (Turkey) and "The Garden of Evening Mists" by Tan Twan Eng of Malaysia.

The winner will be announced on March 14 in Hong Kong, the home of the prize. Last year's winner, "Please Look After Mom" by South Korean writer Kyung-sook Shin has gone on to sell over 2 million copies worldwide.

The jury was headed by literary critic-journalist Maya Jaggi and included Vietnamese-American novelist Monique Truong and novelist Vikram Chandra.

Kerala-born Thayil is a performance poet, songwriter and guitarist, and has published four collections of poetry. "Narcopolis" was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Jaggi said of "Narcopolis", "The poet Jeet Thayil's remarkable fictional debut begins with a single hallucinatory sentence stretching over six-and-a-half pages, viewing the world through an opium haze.

"In 'Narcopolis', set in an old Bombay underworld

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