Shen of the Sea

This book starts off almost a decade in which six out of eight winners are set in the far east. At the same time it follows the style of the previous winner in that it is a collection of short stories, except instead of being from South America these stories are from Asia.

Also like the previous winner these stories are not overly memorable. Neither are the morals of the story overly obvious - although these at least are within one's grasp.

The English vocabulary and style are much more agreeable in this book but it still requires strong reading skills in order to either read with or read over the Chinese names and words that are all over the pages. For example, on page 18, the first full page, the following appear: Ah Mee, huang ya tsai patch, Ching Chi, Ching Cha, Brother Cha, che, wei li (rain hat) and Wou tou meng.