Poet U Sam Oeur's memoir nominated for Kiriyama Prize

Poet U Sam Oeur

Crossing Three Wildernesses, Poems by U Sam Oeur

01 March 2006
Kiriyama Prize nominees announced

The Kiriyama Prize shortlist, an award for books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia, was announced yesterday.

There are ten finalists for the annual prize, and two winners - one for fiction and one for non-fiction - will be named on 28 March.

This year's fiction category includes three novels and two collections of short stories, including Canadian author Karen Connelly's novel 'The Lizard Cage'; 'The Hungry Tide', a novel by Calcutta-born author Amitav Ghosh; and Luis Alberto Urrea's 'The Hummingbird's Daughter'.

The two short-story collections on the shortlist are by writers Yiyun Li ('A Thousand Years of Good Prayers') and Jess Row ('The Train to Lo Wu').

In the non-fiction category, the finalists include: 'Isami's House' by Gail Lee Bernstein; 'Crossing Three Wildernesses', poet U Sam Oeur's memoir of his Cambodia childhood; 'A Man With No Talents' by Oyama Shiro (translated by Edward Fowler); 'The Golden Spruce' by author John Vaillant; and 'The Reindeer People' by Piers Vitebsky.

The Kiriyama Prize is awarded in recognition of outstanding books that promote greater understanding of and among the nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia.

Chinese author Yiyun Li was the winner of last year's inaugural Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award for her Kiriyama Prize shortlisted ' A Thousand Years of Good Prayers'.

Li grew up in Beijing before moving to the United States in 1996 where she now lives with her husband and their two sons.

Her petition for permanent residency in the United States on the grounds of "extraordinary ability in the arts" was turned down earlier this month.

Information on Poet U Sam Oeur's memoir

Crossing Three Wildernesses
Poems by U Sam Oeur
Coffee House Press, December 2005
ISBN: 1566891671
Paperback: 367pp; $16

Celebrated poet U Sam Oeur delivers a breathtaking and haunting portrait of Cambodia from his near-idyllic boyhood, to his years as a government official, to the devastating takeover of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, and the subsequent "liberation" of Cambodia by the Vietnamese. Having been educated in the United States and a proponent of democracy, Oeur was forced to feign illiteracy in order to survive the killing fields and their aftermath. A witness personally touched by the three wildernesses—death by execution, death by disease, and death by starvation—Oeur emerged from the experience with his hope for peace, freedom, and the power of literature unshaken. This remarkable memoir is a testament to the horrors of genocide and the strength of the human spirit.