Nury Vittachi lives in Hong Kong, a place he finds singularly uncreative. He works in Central, which is the centre of the city. At times, he might walk down to The Harbour. In Hong Kong; the City of Dreams (2006) he writes, “… there is a Newish Building and an Adjoining Building… near my old office there is a restaurant Quite Good Chinese restaurant. Its signature dish is Quite Good Noodles.” At the vegetarian restaurant called… Vegetarian Restaurant, the waitresses wear badges with ‘Waitress’ written on it — “To distinguish them from plants and fish” — explains Vittachi. He feels particularly bad for Adjoining Building, as he is sure it must suffer from an identity crisis.

But in this uncreative place, Vittachi has cracked plenty a joke and spun many a yarn. He is the author of 10 non-fiction books, a similar number of fiction books, and he is a business journalist. Prolificacy, it would seem, comes rather easily to him. He is best known for the comedy-crime novel series The Feng Shui Detective, which follows the escapades of CF Wong, a feng shui master and reluctant detective in Singapore. Vittachi is also the founding chairman of the Scholastic Asia Book Prize, helped found the Asia Literary Review and is now working towards the World Readers’ Award, which will launch later this year.

Explaining the award he says, “We feel that the Pulitzer and Man Booker are scandalous. They always present their winners as the world’s greatest books. But most writers are excluded from both those prizes. These awards are scandalously saying, ‘This is the best that Planet Earth can produce… when half the world is left out. I think it is outrageous. Our award will be for the world as it is — Asia dominated.” While you need a US passport to win the Pulitzer, or (until recently) a British or Commonwealth passport to win the Man Booker, the World Readers’ Award will focus on theme rather than nationality. Their mandate clearly is: “to encourage the generation of writing set at least partly outside global literature’s over-used ‘home territories’ of the US and the UK.”

The 56-year-old ‘Earthling’, as Vittachi calls himself, who was born in Ceylon, lived in Malaysia and the UK, highlighted the central position that Asia holds in a larger scheme of things at the recent Jump Start 2014, held in Delhi. He combined his knack for numbers (thanks to business journalism) and his storytelling skills (made apparent in his children’s books) to deliver a most engaging talk. Underscoring that the “world is 2/3rd Asian and 1/3rd everyone else,” — he believes that our books, our literature and the market today needs to reflect this reality.

As one of Asia’s most successful and widely translated children’s book writers, he believes that children’s book authors are the foundation of the entertainment industry — be it psychologically or economically. The most important message that children’s books give, Vittachi says, is — one day your mommy will be dead, but that is okay. Economically, children’s books have revitalised the entertainment industry, be it through the Harry Potter franchise or The Fault in Our Stars .

Making money from books appears to be a skill that Vittachi is rather well-versed in. As a precocious six-year-old he drew a picture and sold it to an uncle. He then went to his neighbour’s house and sold her a story. He quickly realised that he could make money this way.

While book writing and journalism have kept him busy, humour has kept Vittachi inspired. In 2008, he travelled through Asia “investigating the comedy scene”. His travels ensured that he is forever armed with a joke (and its history) up his sleeve.

His prolificacy means that he is presently working on two large projects. One is a series on Asian History for children with Scholastic and the second is ‘creative non-fiction’, where he attempts to solve a real murder mystery with the help of a real detective. Clearly this isn’t an author who suffers from writer’s block. Explaining his working style, he says, “There is something very uncreative about sitting in front of a computer screen. I stay away from mine. Then you are free. When my colleagues see me staring out of the window, they don’t disturb me. Instead, they say, ‘He is on chapter 17’.”

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