The label “Commonwealth literature” is here used as a somewhat loose category for fiction, drama and poetry produced in the area of the British Commonwealth. Consequently, news of literary awards and prizes that are related to the said range of literature will be categorised under this heading.
To see all the latest literary awards news, see the front page of The Burnt Ones: Literary Awards News.
Montana NZ winners announced
Date: August 2, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Winners of the 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards have been announced. The awards, given annually to the best writing in New Zealand, were this year dominated by Lloyd Jones’s Mister Pip, which won the Medal (main prize), and was selected as the fiction winner by both the panel as well as the readers. Janet Frame, meanwhile, won the Poetry Prize for her posthumous collection The Goose Bath.
Works awarded this year in the fiction categories are:
MEDAL FOR FICTION OR POETRY, FICTION WINNER, READERS’ CHOICE AWARD: Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives. On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. So begins this rare, original story about the abiding strength that imagination, once ignited, can provide. As artillery echoes in the mountains, thirteen-year-old Matilda and her peers are riveted by the adventures of a young orphan named Pip in a city called London, a city whose contours soon become more real than their own blighted landscape. As Mr. Watts says, “A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe.†Soon come the rest of the villagers, initially threatened, finally inspired to share tales of their own that bring alive the rich mythology of their past. But in a ravaged place where even children are forced to live by their wits and daily survival is the only objective, imagination can be a dangerous thing.
You can read more about Mister Pip at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
FICTION RUNNER UP: The Cowboy Dog
by Nigel Cox
When Chester Farlowe’s father is killed, Chester is forced to leave the vast cattle ranches of New Zealand’s central volcanic plateau for the badlands of urban Auckland. Henry Stroud, proprietor of the I Fry takeaway wagon, takes him under his wing and rechristens him “Mr. Dog.†Still full of anger six years later, Chester sets out to plot revenge on his father’s killer and finds that he must contend with Boss Lennox, the Sultation Kid, and the seductive and inscrutable Miss Peet before he gets to the showdown. This mythical story reconfigures the New Zealand experience with an absorbing coming-of-age tale.
You can read more about The Cowboy Dog at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
FICTION RUNNER UP: The Fainter
by Damien Wilkins
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
POETRY: The Goose Bath
by Janet Frame
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
BEST FIRST FICTION: The Sound of Butterflies
by Rachael King
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
BEST FIRST POETRY: Secret Heart
by Airini Beautrais
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
Filed under Commonwealth literature, Fiction, Novels, Poetry, Short stories, Winners
Alexis Wright wins 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award
Date: July 7, 2007 | Discussion: 1 Comment
Alexis Wright has won the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award for her novel Carpentaria. The award, which celebrated its 50th year, was established by the Australian author Miles Franklin to annually award the best ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’.
Carpentaria
by Alexis Wright
Carpentaria is Alexis Wright’s second novel, an epic set in the Gulf country of northwestern Queensland. The novel’s portrait of life in the precariously settled coastal town of Desperance centres on the powerful Phantom family, leader of the Westend Pricklebush people, and its battles with old Joseph Midnight’s renegade Eastend mob on the one hand, and the white officials of Uptown and the neighbouring Gurfurrit mine on the other. Wright’s storytelling is operatic and surreal: a blend of myth and scripture, politics and farce. The novel teems with extraordinary characters - the outcast saviour Elias Smith, the religious zealot Mozzie Fishman, the murderous mayor Bruiser, the moth-ridden Captain Nicoli Finn, the activist Will Phantom, and above all, the rulers of the family, the queen of the rubbish-dump and the fish-embalming king of time, Angel Day and Normal Phantom - figures of such an intense imagining, they stand like giants in this storm-swept world….
You can read more about Carpentaria at Amazon.com.
Filed under Australian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Winners
Montana NZ Book Awards shortlists announced
Date: June 3, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The 2007 Montana New Zealand Book Awards shortlists have been announced. The award recognizes the best writing by New Zealand citizens.
This year’s finalists are:
2007 FICTION FINALISTS:
The Cowboy Dog by Nigel Cox
The Fainter by Damien Wilkins
Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
My Name Was Judas by C.K. Stead
Ocean Roads by James George
2007 BEST FIRST BOOK FICTION FINALISTS:
Davey Darling by Paul Shannon
Overdue New Releases by Matt Johnson
The Sound of Butterflies by Rachael King
2007 POETRY FINALISTS:
The Goose Bath by Janet Frame
One Shapely Thing by Dinah Hawken
The Year of the Bicycle by James Brown
2007 POETRY FIRST BOOK FINALISTS:
After the Dance by Michele Amas
Cup by Alison Wong
Secret Heart by Airini Beautrais
The full list of finalists, including those in the non-fiction categories, can be found at the Montana NZ Book Awards website.
Filed under Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Poetry, Shortlists
Commonwealth Writers’ Prize winners announced
Date: May 30, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The 2007 overall winners of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize have been announced. The £10,000 award for the overall Best Book and the £5,000 for the Best First Book were chosen from the eight regional winners selected earlier this year.
This year’s winners are:
BEST BOOK: Mister Pip
by Lloyd Jones
On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, who sweeps out the ruined schoolhouse and begins to read to the children each day from Charles Dickens’s classic Great Expectations. …
You can read more about Mister Pip at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.ca.
BEST FIRST BOOK: Vandal Love
by D.Y. Béchard
A family curse – a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship – causes the Hervé children to be born either giants or runts. An astonishing novel, Vandal Love follows generations of this unique French-Canadian family across North America, and through the twentieth century, as they struggle to find their place in the world. …
You can read more about Vandal Love at Amazon.com and Amazon.ca.
Filed under African literature, Asian literature, Australian literature, British literature, Canadian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Winners, World literature
Miles Franklin Award shortlist
Date: April 20, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
A four-novel shortlist for the 2007 Miles Franklin Award has been announced. Established in 1954 with a bequest from author Miles Franklin, the prize is awarded for the novel that presents Australian life in any of its phases with the highest literary merit.
The winner of the $42,000 (Australian) award will be known on Thursday 21 June 2007.
Careless
by Deborah Robertson
Eight-year-old Pearl tries very hard to get things right. In their cramped apartment, she watches over her small brother and manages her mother’s happiness, while carefully guarding her private passions. But the events of a summer’s day are about to change Pearl’s world, and nothing may ever be right again. In a cooler, greener suburb Sonia is learning to live alone after the death of her husband, and at the edge of the city, close to the beaches, the young artist Adam Logan is hoping that his controversial exhibit will improve his fortunes. In unforeseen ways, Pearl’s tragedy will draw the threads of all their lives together. Combining the intimacy of a family’s heartache with the suspense of a thriller, “Careless” is a gripping, seductive novel about the ties of caring and responsibility that are both formed and broken in today’s society, and about the resilience of the human psyche. …
You can read more about Careless at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Carpentaria
by Alexis Wright
Unfortunately, no description is available for this work.
Dreams of Speaking
by Gail Jones
‘We must talk, Alice Black, about this world of modern things. This buzzing world.’ Alice is entranced by the aesthetics of technology and, in every aeroplane flight, every Xerox machine, every neon sign, sees the poetry of modernity. Mr Sakamoto, a survivor of the atomic bomb, is an expert on Alexander Graham Bell. The pair forge an unlikely friendship as Mr Sakamoto regales Alice with stories of twentieth-century invention. His own knowledge begins to inform her writing, and these two solitary beings become a mutual support for each other a long way from home. This novel from Man Booker longlisted author, Gail Jones is distinguished by its honesty and intelligence. From the boundlessness of space walking to the frustrating constrictions of one person’s daily existence, “Dreams of Speaking paints” with grace and skill the experience of needing to belong despite wanting to be alone. …
You can read more about Dreams of Speaking at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Theft: A Love Story
by Peter Carey
Narrated by the twin voices of the artist Butcher Bones, and his ‘damaged two-hundred-and-twenty-pound brother’ Hugh, “Theft: A Love Story” once again displays Peter Carey’s extraordinary flair for language. Ranging from the rural wilds of Australia to Manhattan via Tokyo, it is a brilliant and moving exploration of art, fraud, responsibility and redemption. …
You can read more about Theft: A Love Story at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Filed under Australian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Shortlists
Man Booker International shortlist announced
Date: April 12, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Shortlist for the 2007 Man Booker International Prize, a biennial prize awarding living authors published in English, has been announced. The listed authors are:
Chinua Achebe
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Peter Carey
Don DeLillo
Carlos Fuentes
Doris Lessing
Ian McEwan
Harry Mulisch
Alice Munro
Michael Ondaatje
Amos Oz
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Michael Tournier
Winner of the £60,000 prize will be announced in June. The first Man Booker International Prize, which was awarded two years ago, went to the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare.