Irish award might help you choose a good read for 2012

With a prize of €100,000, the International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award is the world’s most valuable annual literary prize for a single work of fiction published in English. The Award is a result of a partnership between Dublin City Council and IMPAC, a company which operates in over 50 countries and is administered by Dublin City Public Libraries.

The unique thing about this award is that the nominations are made by libraries in capital and major cities all over the world, each participating library being able to make 3 nominations on the basis of ‘high literary merit’ as determined by the nominating library.

Our own State Library of NSW is one of the participants.

The longlist was announced yesterday and if you click here you can read the full long list and also read a plot summary of each one. A judging panel then comes to a shortlist of 10 titles (due in April 2012) before the winner is announced in June 2012.

This year the 147 eligible nominated novels have come from 122 cities and 45 countries worldwide. Thirty-four of the nomintated titles have been translated into English from 18 different languages. Thirty-one of the nominated titles are first novels.

Australian nominees are Roger McDonald for When Colts Ran, Kim Scott for That Deadman Dance and Chris Womersley for Bereft.

Man Booker Prize Winner 2011

Three times shortlisted author Julian Barnes is the winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 for his novel, The Sense of an Ending.

The Sense of an Ending is his first novel since 2005. His previously shortlisted novels are Arthur and George (2005), England, England (1998) and Flaubert’s Parrot(1984). Barnes has won several other prestigious prizes; he is the only writer to have won both the Prix Médicis (for Flaubert’s Parrot) and the Prix Femina (for Talking it Over), he was awarded the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 2004 and earlier this year he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature in 2011 for his lifetime achievement in literature.

Dame Stella Rimington, Chair of the 2011 judges, made the announcement at the awards dinner at London’s Guildhall. Julian Barnes was presented with a cheque for £50,000. Dame Stella Rimington commented, ‘Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending has the markings of a classic of English Literature. It is exquisitely written, subtly plotted and reveals new depths with each reading.’ [Man Booker website]

The Sense of an Ending

The story of a man coming to terms with the mutable past, Julian Barnes’s new novel is laced with his trademark precision, dexterity and insight. It is the work of one of the world’s most distinguished writers.

Tony Webster and his clique first met Adrian Finn at school. Sex-hungry and book-hungry, they navigated the girl drought of gawky adolescence together, trading in affectations, in-jokes, rumour and wit. Maybe Adrian was a little more serious than the others, certainly more intelligent, but they swore to stay friends forever. Until Adrian’s life took a turn into tragedy, and all of them, especially Tony, moved on and did their best to forget.

Now Tony is in middle age. He’s had a career and a marriage, a calm divorce. He gets along nicely, he thinks, with his one child, a daughter, and even with his ex-wife. He’s certainly never tried to hurt anybody. Memory, though, is imperfect. It can always throw up surprises, as a lawyer’s letter is about to prove. The unexpected bequest conveyed by that letter leads Tony on a dogged search through a past suddenly turned murky. And how do you carry on, contentedly, when events conspire to upset all your vaunted truths? [Fantastic Fiction]

You can read about the Man Booker shortlisted novels here.

Cringeworthy stuff – and my favourite!

This is one of my favourite literary prizes. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is different from other contests because it rewards bad writing – in honour of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s 1830 novel Paul Clifford and its much-quoted opening, “It was a dark and stormy night”. Contestants are required to compose bad opening sentences to imaginary novels.

This year’s winner is a university professor, Sue Fondrie, whose description of thoughts like mutilated sparrows, the shortest winner in the prize’s 29 year history, has been declared the worst sentence of the year :

Cheryl’s mind turned like the vanes of a wind-powered turbine, chopping her sparrow-like thoughts into bloody pieces that fell onto a growing pile of forgotten memories.

The Runner-Up is Rodney Reed with :

As I stood among the ransacked ruin that had been my home, surveying the aftermath of the senseless horrors and atrocities that had been perpetrated on my family and everything I hold dear, I swore to myself that no matter where I had to go, no matter what I had to do or endure, I would find the man who did this . . . and when I did, when I did, oh, there would be words.

Category Winners are as follows :

Adventure - From the limbs of ancient live oaks moccasins hung like fat black sausages — which are sometimes called boudin noir, black pudding or blood pudding, though why anyone would refer to a sausage as pudding is hard to understand and it is even more difficult to divine why a person would knowingly eat something made from dried blood in the first place — but be that as it may, our tale is of voodoo and foul murder, not disgusting food.

Crime – Wearily approaching the murder scene of Jeannie and Quentin Rose and needing to determine if this was the handiwork of the Scented Strangler–who had a twisted affinity for spraying his victims with his signature raspberry cologne–or that of a copycat, burnt-out insomniac detective Sonny Kirkland was sure of one thing: he’d have to stop and smell the Roses.

Fantasy - Within the smoking ruins of Keister Castle, Princess Gwendolyn stared in horror at the limp form of the loyal Centaur who died defending her very honor; “You may force me to wed,” she cried at the leering and victorious Goblin King, “but you’ll never be half the man he was. “

Historical Fiction – Napoleon’s ship tossed and turned as the emperor, listening while his generals squabbled as they always did, splashed the tepid waters in his bathtub.

Purple Prose – As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue.

Romance – As the dark and mysterious stranger approached, Angela bit her lip anxiously, hoping with every nerve, cell, and fiber of her being that this would be the one man who would understand—who would take her away from all this—and who would not just squeeze her boob and make a loud honking noise, as all the others had.

Sci Fi - Morgan ‘Bamboo’ Barnes, Star Pilot of the Galaxia (flagship of the Solar Brigade), accepted an hors d’oeuvre from the triangular-shaped platter offered to him from the Princess Qwillia—lavender-skinned she was and busty, with o of her four eyes what Barnes called ‘bedroom eyes’—and marveled at how on her planet, Chlamydia-5, these snacks were called ‘Hi-Dee-Hoes’ but on Earth they were simply called Ritz Crackers with Velveeta.

Western – The laser-blue eyes of the lone horseman tracked the slowly lengthening lariat of a Laredo dawn as it snaked its way through Dead Man’s Pass into the valley below and snared the still sleeping town’s tiny church steeple in a noose of light with the oh-so-familiar glow of a Dodge City virgin’s last maiden blush.

You can read the Runners-up and Dishonourable Mentions in all categories here.

Man Booker Dozen

The thirteen books on the Man Booker Prize 2011 longlist were announced last night.

The longlisted titles were chosen by a panel of five judges chaired by author and former Director-General of MI5, Dame Stella Rimington, from a whopping 138 books. The so-called ‘Man Booker Dozen’ include one former Man Booker Prize winner (Alan Hollinghurst, in 2004); three previously shortlisted writers (Alan Hollinghurst, Sebastian Barry and Julian Barnes); one longlisted author (Carol Birch); two poets (Alison Pick and Patrick McGuiness); four first time novelists (Stephen Kelman, A.D. Miller, Yvvette Edwards and Patrick McGuinness) and three Canadian writers (Alison Pick, Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan).

 

• Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending
• Sebastian Barry On Canaan’s Side
• Carol Birch Jamrach’s Menagerie
• Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers
• Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues
• Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats
• Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger’s Child
• Stephen Kelman Pigeon English
• Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days
• A.D. Miller Snowdrops
• Alison Pick Far to Go
• Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb
• D.J. Taylor Derby Day

The Guardian online has a beautiful “Man Booker Longlist in Pictures” post with the cover art and a short precis of each book and a link to a review of that book.

The shortlist of six will be announced on Tuesday 6 September and the winner will be announced on Tuesday 18 October at a dinner at London’s Guildhall. The Man Booker Prize is worth £50,000 to the winner and each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their book.

As well as Dame Stella Rimington as the Chair, writer and journalist, Matthew d’Ancona; author, Susan Hill; author and politician, Chris Mullin and Head of Books at the Daily Telegraph, Gaby Wood are on the judging panel.

Hollinghurst and Barnes are the front-runners at this early stage but going on the covers I’m going to back Derby Day, The Last Hundred Days and The Sisters Brothers. I’d have to back The Sisters Brothers for the title too. Next stop The Book Depository????

What do you think? Anyone read any of these authors/titles?

Jonathan Franzen Interview

Jonathan Franzen in interview on the ABC about Freedom

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2011/3154823.htm

Have a listen . . .

Small Island on ABC TV this coming Sunday

I nearly chose this one as my 2011 read rather than The Long Song, I may yet change my mind.

Small Island by Andrea Levy is being shown on ABC 1 this Sunday in the 8:30pm slot. Not sure if it’s over one or more weeks but it should be really good.

Longlist for World’s Richest Literary Prize announced

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, with its prize of €100,000, is the world’s richest literary prize. The award, established in 1994 and awarded annually since 1996, is sponsored by Dublin Corporation and IMPAC, a productivity improvement company which operates in over 50 countries world-wide.

Last night the longlist for the 2011 Award was announced in Dublin. There are 162 eligible nominations come from 126 cities and 43 countries. 42 of the shortlisted titles are translations spanning 14 languages and 35 of them are first novels.

Aussie nominees include :

• Peter Carey – Parrot and Olivier in America
• Nick Cave – The Death of Bunny Munro
• JM Coetzee (we’re adopting him as our own) – Summertime**
• MJ Hyland (another adoptee, she was born in London to Irish parents in 1968 and spent her early childhood in Dublin but she studied English and law at the University of Melbourne) – This is How
• David Malouf – Ransom**
• Alex Miller – Lovesong
• Kristina Olsson – The China Garden**
• Kalinda Ashton – The Danger Game

Those marked ** are the titles nominated by the State Library of New South Wales.

Nominations are made on the basis of “high literary merit” and come from over 100 public libraries worldwide; an unique international library cooperative project. Nominations are made by libraries in capital and major cities and each library can nominate up to three novels each year.

To be eligible for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award the novels need to have first been published in English between January 1st and December 31st 2009 (novels in translation can have been published between January 1st 2005 and December 31st 2009 and first published in English in 2009).

As stated above, this is the world’s richest literary prize with the winner gaining a trophy and €100,000 (or €75,000 to the author and €25,000 to the translator for a novel that has been translated).

The shortlist of a maximum of 10 titles, selected by an international panel of judges, will be announced April 12th 2011 then the winner on June 15th 2011.

Man Booker Prize shortlist 2010

The shortlist of six titles was announced yesterday at a press conference at Man’s London headquarters. The six books, selected from the Man Booker Prize longlist of 13, are:

Peter Carey ~ Parrot and Olivier in America

Emma Donoghue ~ Room

Damon Galgut ~ In a Strange Room

Howard Jacobson ~ The Finkler Question

Andrea Levy ~ The Long Song

Tom McCarthy ~ C

The winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will be announced on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London’s Guildhall.

Man Booker Prize Longlist

The Man Booker Dozen, the longlist for the Man Booker Prize, was announced last night from a total of 138 entries. The prize winner, to be announced in October, receives £50,000 as well as greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition while each of the six shortlisted authors, to be announced in September, will receive £2,500 and a designer-bound edition of their book.

In announcing the longlist Andrew Motion, chair of judges, commented : “Here are thirteen exceptional novels – books we have chosen for their intrinsic quality, without reference to the past work of their authors. Wide-ranging in their geography and their concern, they tell powerful stories which make the familiar strange and cover an enormous range of history and feeling. We feel confident that they will provoke and entertain.”

The 2010 longlist includes two Australians, Peter Carey (two time winner already – Oscar and Lucinda in 1988 and True History of the Kelly Gang in 2001 – also shortlisted in 1985 for Illywhacker and longlisted in 2006 for Theft) and Christos Tsiolkas. who has already won the Commonweath Prize for The Slap.

Here is the Man Booker Dozen for 2010 :

• Peter Carey – Parrot and Olivier in America (Australia)
• Emma Donoghue – Room (Ireland)
• Helen Dunmore – The Betrayal (Britain)
• Damon Galgut – In a Strange Room (South Africa)
• Howard Jacobson – The Finkler Question (Britain)
• Andrea Levy – The Long Song (Britain)
• Tom McCarthy – C (Britain)
• David Mitchell – The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Britain)
• Lisa Moore - February (Canada)
• Paul Murray – Skippy Dies (Ireland)
• Rose Tremain – Trespass (Britain)
• Christos Tsiolkas – The Slap (Australia)
• Alan Warner - The Stars in the Bright Sky (Britain)

You can see a list of previous longlisted, shortlisted and winning novels from 1969 to 2009 here or here (with book covers).

Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

I was surprised that The Lacuna won the Orange Prize a couple of weeks ago, beating Man Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall. I loved Wolf Hall (history is my thing) and can’t wait for the next book(s) to come out so I can read it again. I was very pleased then to see that Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall has won a new literary prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction which comes with £25,000 prize money. The Walter Scott Prize, is sponsored by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch (distant descendants of Sir Walter Scott) with support from EventScotland and was launched only this year. The prize’s definition of historical is where the events described take place at least 60 years before publication, and so stand outside personal experience of the author. The definition comes from Scott’s subtitle for his novel Waverley: “Tis Sixty Years Since.” The judges described Wolf Hall as “as good as the historical novel gets – immersive, engaging, beautifully crafted, and compulsively readable. Choose any superlative: it will fail this book. Mantel’s empathy for, and assimilation of, her world is so seamless and effortless as to be almost disturbing.” Shortlisted for the prize were :

• Hodd by Adam Thorpe
• Lustrum by Robert Harris
• Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
• Stone’s Fall by Iain Pears
• The Glass Room by Simon Mawer
• The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds
• Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel