Hong Kong, CHINA - Chinese writer Su Tong has won Asia's top literary prize with a bleak novel about a disgraced Communist Party official's attempts to rebuild his life, trumping a clutch of Indian writers on the shortlist.

Su's novel, The Boat To Redemption, is about a womanising official who castrates himself after being banished to a river barge with his young son just following the tumultuous Cultural Revolution. On Monday, it won the Man Asian Literary Prize, the regional equivalent of the Man Booker Prize, and US$10,000 ($13,847).

'I feel this prize is independently judged,' he said. 'So it's important to me because I'm a writer who is not famous for winning prizes. I'm more famous for not winning prizes.'

His dark, provocative works are popular but have sometimes put him at odds with the authorities. The judges - Indian writer Pankaj Mishra, Chinese-American author Gish Jen and Irish writer Colm Toibin - described Su's novel as a picaresque, political fable as well as 'a parable about the journeys we take in our lives, the distance between the boat of our desires and the dry land of our achievement'.

Su is perhaps best known for his 1989 novella, Wives And Concubines, the basis of Chinese director Zhang Yimou's 1991 film, Raise The Red Lantern. He has written six novels, including 2006's Rice and My Life As Emperor.

The Man Asian Literary Prize aims to recognise the region's top writers and give them a platform to reach a broader, international audience. It is awarded annually to a work not yet published into English, with the inaugural prize in 2007 won by China's Jiang Rong for Wolf Totem.

This year's shortlist included Indian writers Omair Ahmad for Jimmy The Terrorist, Siddharth Chowdhury for The Descartes Highlands and Nitasha Kaul for Residue, as well as Filipino author Eric Gamalinda for Day Scholar.