Coetzee up for new fiction award

JM Coetzee was awarded the Booker Prize for Disgrace in 1999

JM Coetzee has been nominated for a new prize for fiction which has the biggest payout for a literary honour in Australia and Asia.

The Australia-Asia award for a book length work of fiction carries a prize worth A$110,000 (£44,100).

The work must be written by a resident of Australia or Asia or be primarily set in a country of the region.

Coetzee, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003, earned his nod for Australian-based Diary of a Bad Year.

The South African writer has also won the Booker Prize on two occasions.

Recent Booker prize nominee Michelle de Kretser has also made the list for The Lost Dog.

Recognising the increasing use of electronic media, the award is open to works published electronically as well as in print.

Launching the prize in April, Western Australia's premier Alan Carpenter said he hoped the award could grow to be comparable to the Booker or the Pulitzer prizes for writing.

The winner will be announced on 21 November 2008 at King's Park on the outskirts of Perth.