The winner of the Commonwealth Writers first book prize,
Mohammed Hanif, complained to the audience at Auckland's
Aotea Centre tonight that he was a victim of racism when he
arrived in the country.
The Pakistan-born writer told the audience as he accepted his
award he had been held up by immigration authorities for
about three hours.
Mr Hanif is a journalist who has worked for the BBC and the
Washington Post.
When asked later if he considered the hold-up was due to
racism, he said, "yes".
Mr Hanif won the first book award for his novel A Case of
Exploding Mangoes.
The book takes a spin on why the Hercules C130 aircraft
crashed on August 17, 1988, killing Pakistan's military
dictator General Zia ul Haq.
Christos Tsiolkas of Australia won the Best Book award for
The Slap, a tale about middle-class suburban Australia
and its notions of child-rearing and acceptable behaviour.
The awards celebrate cutting-edge fiction from across the
four regions of the Commonwealth: Asia; Canada and the
Caribbean; Europe and South Asia; and South East Asia and the
Pacific.
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