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.
International IMPAC Literary Award shortlist announced
Date: April 9, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Shortlist for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, which at 100,000€ is the world’s most lucrative prize for a single work of fiction published in or translated into English, has been announced. The list of eight novels, selected from 169 novels nominated by libraries from around the world, is:
Arthur and George
by Julian Barnes
Praised as a “master storyteller†(The Wall Street Journal) and hailed for his “flawless use of language†(Boston Herald), Irish author and playwright Sebastian Barry has created a powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war. In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. …
You can read more about Arthur and George at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
A Long Long Way
by Sebastian Barry
Praised as a “master storyteller” (The Wall Street Journal) and hailed for his “flawless use of language” (Boston Herald), Irish author and playwright Sebastian Barry has created a powerful new novel about divided loyalties and the realities of war. In 1914, Willie Dunne, barely eighteen years old, leaves behind Dublin, his family, and the girl he plans to marry in order to enlist in the Allied forces and face the Germans on the Western Front. …
You can read more about A Long Long Way at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Slow Man
by J.M. Coetzee
Paul Rayment is on the threshold of a comfortable old age when a calamitous cycling accident results in the amputation of a leg. Humiliated, his body truncated, his life circumscribed, he turns away from his friends. He hires a nurse named Marijana, with whom he has a European childhood in common: hers in Croatia, his in France. Tactfully and efficiently she ministers to his needs. But his feelings for her, and for her handsome teenage son, are complicated by the sudden arrival on his doorstep of the celebrated Australian novelist Elizabeth Costello, who threatens to take over the direction of his life and the affairs of his heart. Unflinching in its vision of suffering and generous in its portrayal of the spirit of care, “Slow Man” is a masterful work of fiction by one of the world’s greatest writers. …
You can read more about Slow Man at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
by Jonathan Safran Foer
Nine-year-old Oskar Schell is an inventor, amateur entomologist, Francophile, letter writer, pacifist, natural historian, percussionist, romantic, Great Explorer, jeweller, detective, vegan, and collector of butterflies. When his father is killed in the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre, Oskar sets out to solve the mystery of a key he discovers in his father’s closet. It is a search which leads him into the lives of strangers, through the five boroughs of New York, into history, to the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima, and on an inward journey which brings him ever closer to some kind of peace. …
You can read more about Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
The Short Day Dying
by Peter Hobbs
This is the story of four seasons in the life of Charles Wenmoth, a twenty-seven-year-old apprentice blacksmith and Methodist lay preacher in Cornwall in 1870. Life is at its hardest; poverty is everywhere. Charles crosses and recrosses the raw, beautiful landscape, attending to the sick and helping the poor, preaching in chapels with ever-dwindling congregations. He questions his faith along the way but never quite loses it, balancing it with the pleasure he takes in nature, the light in the skies, the colors of the earth, and in his attachment to a girl to whom he is drawn by the piety and patience she maintains despite her long illness. …
You can read more about The Short Day Dying at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
No Country for Old Men
by Cormac McCarthy
Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, instead finds men shot dead, a load of heroin, and more than $2 million in cash. Taking the money out, he knows, will change everything. But only after two more men are murdered does a victim’s burning car lead Sheriff Bell to the carnage out in the desert, and he soon realizes that Moss and his young wife are in desperate need of protection. …
You can read more about No Country for Old Men at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Out Stealing Horses
by Per Petterson
Set in the easternmost region of Norway, Out Stealing Horses begins with an ending. Sixty-seven-year-old Trond has settled into a rustic cabin in an isolated area to live the rest of his life with a quiet deliberation. A meeting with his only neighbor, however, forces him to reflect on that fateful summer. …
You can read more about Out Stealing Horses at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Shalimar the Clown
by Salman Rushdie
This is the story of Maximilian Ophuls, America’s counterterrorism chief, one of the makers of the modern world; his Kashmiri Muslim driver and subsequent killer, a mysterious figure who calls himself Shalimar the clown; Max’s illegitimate daughter India; and a woman who links them, whose revelation finally explains them all. It is an epic narrative that moves from California to Kashmir, France, and England, and back to California again. Along the way there are tales of princesses lured from their homes by demons, legends of kings forced to defend their kingdoms against evil. And there is always love, gained and lost, uncommonly beautiful and mortally dangerous. …
You can read more about Shalimar the Clown at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
Filed under American literature, British literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Shortlists
2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction longlist announced
Date: March 19, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
The 20 books making up the longlist for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction have been named. They are:
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun
Clare Allan for Poppy Shakespeare
Rachel Cusk for Arlington Park
Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss
Patricia Ferguson for Peripheral Vision
Margaret Forster for Over
Nell Freudenberger for The Dissident
Rebecca Gowers for When to Walk
Xiaolu Guo for A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
Jane Harris for The Observations
M J Hyland for Carry Me Down
Lori Lansens for The Girls
Lisa Moore for Alligator
Catherine O’Flynn for What Was Lost
Stef Penney for The Tenderness of Wolves
Deborah Robertson for Careless
Rachel Seiffert for Afterwards
Jane Smiley for Ten Days in the Hills
Anne Tyler for Digging to America
Melanie Wallace for The Housekeeper
The Orange Prize for Fiction is an annual literary prize that awards the best English language full-length novel written by a woman of any nationality in the preceding year, and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000.
This year’s shortlist will be unveiled on April 17th, and the winners will be known on June 6th.
Filed under American literature, Australian literature, British literature, Canadian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Shortlists
2007 Miles Franklin Award longlist announced
Date: March 19, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
Longlist for the 2007 Miles Franklin Award has been announced. The eight novels selected are:
Beyond the Break by Sandra Hall
Careless by Deborah Robertson
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright
Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
Silent Parts by John Charalambous
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey
The Unexpected Elements of Love by Kate Legge
The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan
The Miles Franklin Award is awarded annually for “the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and which presents Australian life in any of its phases.”
This year’s shortlist will be announced on Thursday, 19th of April, with the winner being revealed on Thursday 21st June.
Filed under Australian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Shortlists
Early March Roundup
Date: March 11, 2007 | Discussion: No Comments
I am unfortunately extremely pressed on time these days, so this post will be somewhat unusual in that I am going to provide you with direct links to the latest winner and nominee lists. Hopefully, normality will return in April.
- Winterset shortlist has been announced
- Los Angeles Times awards nominations have been announced
- National Book Critics have announced their winners
- Independent foreign fiction prize has announced its nominations
- Wales Book of the Year long list has been announced
- First regional Commonwealth Prize winners have been announced
- British Book Awards have announced their shortlist
- Kenneth J. Harvey has won the Writers’ Trust Award for fiction
- Rehman Raahi has been awarded the Jnanpith Award
Filed under African literature, American literature, British literature, Canadian literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Poetry, Short stories, Shortlists, South American literature, Winners, World literature
2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize shortlists announced
Date: February 11, 2007 | Discussion: 1 Comment
The Commonwealth foundation has announced the regional shortlists for the 2007 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. The annual fiction prize that rewards writing from the British Commonwealth is selected by first judging books from four different regional groups (Africa, Canada and the Caribbean, Europe and South Asia, South East Asia and South Pacific) with each including two separate categories (Best Book, Best First Book), each worth £1,000. Once the regional winners in these categories are chosen, they are pitted against one another for the final prizes (£10,000 for Best Book and £5,000 for Best First Book).
This year’s nominees include Man Booker Prize shortlisted authors MJ Hyland, David Mitchell, James Robertson and Naeem Murr. The full list follows:
Africa - Best Book
Native Commissioner by Shaun Johnson (South Africa)
What Kind of Child by Ken Barris (South Africa), Kwela Books
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria)
The Wizard of the Crow by Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Kenya)
Playing in the Light by Zoe Wicomb (South Africa)
Song of the Atman by Ronnie Govender (South Africa)
Africa - Best First Book
All We Have Left Unsaid by Maxime Case (South Africa)
Ice in the Lungs by Gerald Kraak (South Africa)
A Life Elsewhere by Segun Alofabi (Nigeria)
Room 207 by Kgebeti Moele (South Africa)
The Beggar’s Sign Writer by Louis Greenberg (South Africa)
The Shadow Follows by David Medalie (South Africa)
Canada and the Caribbean - Best Book
The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens (Canada)
Chutney Power by Willi Chen (Trinidad)
Fabrizio’s Return by Mark Frutkin (Canada)
The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud (Canada)
The Unfortunate Marriage of Azeb Yitades by Nega Mezlekia (Canada)
The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro (Canada)
The Friends of Meager Fortune by David Adams Richards (Canada)
Canada and the Caribbean - Best First Book
Baby Khaki’s Wings by Anar Ali (Canada)
Vandal Love by D.Y. Bechard (Canada)
De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage (Canada)
The Fear of Stones by Kei Miller (Jamaica)
Indigenous Beasts by Nathan Sellyn (Canada)
The Hour of Bad Decisions by Russell Wangersky (Canada)
Europe and South Asia - Best Book
Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra (India)
Miss Webster and Chérif by Patricia Duncker (UK)
The Sweet and Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneratne (Sri Lanka)
Carry Me Down by M J Hyland (UK)
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell (UK)
The Perfect Man by Naeem Murr (UK)
The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson (UK)
Europe and South Asia - Best First Book
The Saffron Kitchen by Yasmin Crowther (UK)
The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin (UK)
This Time of Dying by Reina James (UK)
Giraffe by J M Ledgard (UK)
Londonstani by Gautam Malkani (UK)
In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar (UK)
The Amnesia Clinic by James Scudamore (UK)
South East Asia and South Pacific - Best Book
Ocean Roads by James George (New Zealand)
Theft: A Love Story by Peter Carey (Australia)
Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones (New Zealand)
Carpentaria by Alexis Wright (Australia)
The Fainter by Damien Wilkins (New Zealand)
Red Spikes by Margo Lanagan (Australia)
Careless by Deborah Robertson (Australia)
South East Asia and South Pacific - Best First Book
Tuvalu by Andrew O’Connor (Australia)
Davey Darling by Paul Shannon (New Zealand)
The Fish & Chip Song by Carl Nixon (New Zealand)
The Long Road of the Junkmailer by Patrick Holland (Australia)
Poinciana by Jane Turner Goldsmith (Australia)
Filed under Asian literature, Australian literature, British literature, Commonwealth literature, English literature, Fiction, Novels, Shortlists
2006 Man Booker Prize Winner Announced
Date: October 10, 2006 | Discussion: 1 Comment
Kiran Desai has been awarded the 2006 Man Booker Prize, one of the world’s most prestigious and best known literary awards. The annual prize, first given in 1969, awards £50,000 to the best original full-length novel written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.
The winning work, The Inheritance of Loss, is only the second novel published by Desai, and the 35-year-old is now the youngest female ever to have won the Booker Prize. The novel is dedicated to her mother, Anita Desai, who herself was nominated for the Booker Prize on three separate occasions. Kiran Desai grew up in India and England, and now resides in the USA.
The Inheritance of Loss
by Kiran Desai
At the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, lives an embittered old judge who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and his cook’s son trying to stay a step ahead of US immigration services, this is far from easy. When a Nepalese insurgency threatens Sai’s blossoming romance with her handsome tutor they are forced to consider their colliding interests. …
You can read more about The Inheritance of Loss at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk
A list of works that were shortlisted for the prize this year can be found here.
