SINGAPORE - Singapore writer Lee Jing-Jing has been longlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for her novel How We Disappeared.
Lee's novel, which is about "comfort women" in World War II Singapore, made the British literary award's list of 12 announced on Monday (March 9).
This comes less than a week after news that Lee's book was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a British award for female authors.
Lee, 34, who is based in Amsterdam, said she found out about being longlisted for the Walter Scott prize when she and her family were waiting to board a plane to London for the Women's Prize fundraiser.
Coming after news that she had been longlisted for the Women's Prize, she said: "I couldn't believe it. I was jumping up and down - people were staring and I didn't care. It's almost an embarrassment of riches."
For the Walter Scott prize, her book will be up against titles including Joseph O'Connor's Shadowplay, James Meek's To Calais, in Ordinary Time and The Offing by Benjamin Myers, who had won the prize in 2018 for The Gallows Pole.
First awarded in 2010, the £25,000 prize is in its 11th year and open to books published in the previous year in the United Kingdom, Ireland or the Commonwealth and whose storyline mostly takes place at least 60 years ago.
The prize is sponsored by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch who have distant family links with Scott, who is regarded as the creator of the historical fiction genre with works such as Ivanhoe (1819).
Previous winners include Malaysian writer Tan Twan Eng for The Garden Of Evening Mists (2013), English writer Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall (2010) and English author Andrea Levy for The Long Song (2011).
The shortlist for this year will be announced in April and the winner will be announced at the Baillie Gifford Borders Book Festival in Scotland on June 12.
Said the judges in a press release: "In its 11th year, with more submissions than ever before, the 2020 Walter Scott Prize longlist reflects the energy and dynamism of modern historical fiction, a genre presenting authors with very particular challenges and delights.
"As always with our longlist, readers will find themselves in all kinds of places in all kinds of centuries, both in the company of familiar authors and hearing newer voices."
In How We Disappeared, Lee's international debut, readers hear the voices of Wang Di, an elderly cardboard collector who endured sexual slavery in a WWII Japanese military brothel as a teenager, and Kevin, a 12-year-old boy who is bullied at school and is trying to find a missing link from his family's past.
Asked if historical fiction is becoming more recognised and whether she sees herself writing more historical novels, Lee said: "Hilary Mantel has helped expand the possibilities of what historical fiction means to readers.
"However, I didn't start writing How We Disappeared with the intention of writing in a specific genre. I was simply listening to a voice, Wang Di's (and later, Kevin's) voice.
"I write about things that I can't not write about - if that means that the book is set in the past, then I will put everything I have into making it lift from the page."
She added: "At the moment, my next book is promising to be something quite different. Perhaps historical fiction is something that I'll return to in the future."
