Vittachi currently lives in Hong Kong with his wife Mary Lacey Vittachi and their three adopted children; Jem Vittachi, Kelci Vittachi and Lexi Vittachi.
Biography
Around the time of Vittachi's birth, civil unrest had broken out in Ceylon between the majority race and the minority race, and a strictly enforced communications blackout was in operation. Vittachi's journalist father Tarzie defied the blackout to write a book about the fighting, which was smuggled to London and published by Andre Deutsch under the title "Emergency 58". After receiving death threats Vittachi's family fled to Singapore and later settled in Kuala Lumpur. In 1959 Vittachi's father won the Ramon Magsaysay Award in the category of journalism, literature and creative communication arts, in recognition for his courage in revealing the truth about the "secret civil war".
Vittachi was educated in the United Kingdom. He started his journalism career on London's Fleet Street, before moving to Hong Kong, where he wrote the gossip columns ''Lai See'' and ''Spice Trader'' for the South China Morning Post from 1987 until 1997. The columns included sympathetic accounts of grammatically incorrect use of English, usually by Asians , and incorrect observance of Asian customs, usually by Europeans. Published collections of the columns sold out in days. Vittachi later moved to the Far Eastern Economic Review and ran a similar column called "Travellers' Tales".
Pieces written by Vittachi on such matters as unusual road signs, curious personal names, Asian movie subtitles, "instructions for idiots", and stories of foolish acts by Asian criminals, have been relayed as stories of frivolous humor on the Internet. His accounts of new instances of Engrish have sometimes been taken more seriously, receiving scholarly attention. This level of interest eventually resulted in a novel, The Feng Shui Detective, in which Vittachi's protagonists, a feng shui master from China, a young woman from Australia, an Indian mystic and various pan-Asian bad guys, explored a world with much use of Engrish street talk. The first novel in the series was published in Hong Kong in 2000, and subsequently around the world in various other languages. The fifth novel in the series is due to be released before the end of 2007.
After the release of the third book in the series, Vittachi took up writing novels full-time, with occasional forays as a journalist. In April 2003, when widespead fears about the virus were reported in the media around the world, he wrote a series of articles scornful of the scaremongering and argued that the virus would kill fewer people than the common cold. These articles were widely distributed via email, and after his prediction proved accurate, he received an award in 2004 from the Pacific Asia Travel Association as travel journalist of the year. This was a rare example of an email winning an award originally intended for mainstream paper-based publications.
Vittachi founded and was the first editor of the Asian literary anthology ''Dimsum'', which was relaunched in 2005 as the Asia Literary Review, and published work by writers such as , Maxine Hong Kingston, Hanif Kureishi, Thomas Keneally, and Romesh Gunesekera. Vittachi also maintains a blog at ''www.misterjam.com'', named after the pseudonym he uses when touring schools.
In 2007 Vittachi was involved in a controversy involving the Hong Kong International Literary Festival Limited and the Man Asia Literary Prize, which resulted in Vittachi's removal from the board of directors of the festival. In his blog Vittachi claimed that he originated the concept of the Man Asia Literary Prize, and that his removal was a case of "racial insensitivity". Other sources dispute these claims, denying that Vittachi had any key role in establishing the Man Asia Literary Prize, and indicating that the board removed Vittachi for unprofessional behaviour and acting in a manner which was detrimental to the literary festival.
Bibliography
Non-fiction
*Reliable Sauce
*Only in Hong Kong
*Travellers’ Tales
*Goodbye Hong Kong, Hello Xianggang
*The Ultimate Only in Hong Kong Collection
*Guardians of the Treasure House
*Riding the Millennial Storm
*North Wind
*City of Dreams
*The Kama Sutra of Business
Fiction
*The Hong Kong Joke Book
*Asian Values
*The Feng Shui Detective
*The Feng Shui Detective Goes South
*The Feng Shui Detective’s Casebook
*The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics
*Mr. Wong Goes West
Children’s books
*Ludwig and the Chewy Chunks Café
*Dead Eric Gets a Virus
*Robot Junior
*The True History of Santa Claus
*The Day it Rained Letters
*The Paper Princess
*May Moon and the Secrets of the CPAs
*Mozzle and the Giant
*The Place You’re Meant to Be
*The World’s Funniest Book of Poems
*Twilight in the Land of Nowhen
*Jeri Telstar, The Homework Hero
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