The Tolstoys, Hugos and Eliots of today are to be found not in Europe but in Asia, according to the chair of directors of the Man Asian literary prize. Announcing the longlist for this year's $30,000 (£19,000) award for the best novel by an Asian writer, which ranges from Japan to India and Iran to South Korea, Professor David Parker from the Chinese University of Hong Kong said that "if we are looking for books of the epic scale and stature of the great European 19th-century novels, we must turn to Asia".

Pointing to the Man Asian longlist inclusion of both Haruki Murakami's "massive magnum opus" 1Q84 and Amitav Ghosh's three-volume epic about the opium wars, of which River of Smoke is the second volume, Parker said that Asia is producing novels of "a scale and ambition we don't often see in western writing these days.

"Could it be that as the world's economic centre of gravity is moving eastwards, so too is its artistic energy and ambition?" he asked.

Five novels from India have been nominated for this year's Man Asian award: doctor and author Jahnavi Barua's Rebirth, about a pregnant young woman in an uncertain marriage; cricket journalist Rahul Bhattacharya's The Sly Company of People Who Care, in which a journalist travels to Guyana; Ghosh's River of Smoke; Anuradha Roy's tale of a teacher in the remote Himalaya The Folded Earth; and Tarun J Tejpal's exploration of the pathologies of power, purity and dogma The Valley of Masks.

There are two longlisted titles from Japan, Murakami's epic love story 1Q84 and Banana Yoshimoto's The Lake, in which a young woman moves to Tokyo to become a graphic artist following the death of her mother. Censored in China, Yan Lianke makes the running for Dream of Ding Village, an account of a blood-selling scandal in contemporary China, with the longlist completed by debut Pakistani author Jamil Ahmad's The Wandering Falcon, acclaimed Bangladeshi novelist Tahmima Anam's The Good Muslim, prominent Iranian writer Mahmoud Dowlatabadi's The Colonel and award-winning South Korean novelist Kyung-sook Shin's Please Look After Mom.

Razia Iqbal, BBC correspondent and chair of the judging panel, said the longlist provides "the epic as well as the quotidian, the established writers as well as some on the cusp of greater success". Together with her fellow judges, the authors Chang-rae Lee and Vikas Swarup, she picked the 12 titles from 90 submitted novels. The books are connected, she said, by "a thing that happens when we read good fiction: the cumulative impact of sentence after good sentence is transforming for the reader. So, while it is hoped that the list reflects among the best of what is coming out of Asia, it also presents Asia to itself, an equally important mirror to hold up."

The announcement of the titles in the running for the Man Asian prize, which will be awarded on 15 March 2012, follows the unveiling of the six books in the running for the DSC prize for South Asian literature. Worth $50,000 (£31,000), the award is for the best writing about the South Asian region by an author from anywhere in the world and is also dominated by Indian writers, with Sri Lankan author Shehan Karunatilaka the only non-Indian writer on the shortlist. Indian authors UR Ananthamurthy, Chandrakanta, Usha KR, Tabish Khair and Kavery Nambisan complete the line-up for the DSC award, the winner of which will be announced on 21 January.