The new Man Booker prize – the international version, since the normal version bars all authors outside the British Commonwealth, has announced its shortlist. And with the caliber of writers on the list, judging the winner will not be a matter of parsing levels of talent – everyone on the list has plenty of that […]
So I’ve been following the Tournament of Books with glee, and I just had to link to the judge’s essay on Richard Ford’s Lay of the Land VS Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August. It’s hilarious. And I’m loving the comments from the peanut gallery at the bottom, although I still wanted Absurdistan to win over Half […]
For the second time (first in 1996), Granta has named the Best of Young American Novelists (all of them under 35). Some choices are predictable (Jonathan Safran Foer and Gary Shteyngart), but there are a number I haven’t read but now want to. There’s been buzz in the blogosphere about Daniel Alarcon’s Lost City […]
The Los Angeles Times announced the finalists for its annual Book Prize last night. Where? In New York, of course. Los Angeles always seems to be deferring to the great agent/publishing nucleus on the other side of the country (a very practical move, I know, but also a shame). Below are the nominees for Fiction […]
Philip Roth has nabbed the PEN/Faulkner award for “Everyman”. It’s the third time he’s won (previously for “Operation Shylock” and “The Human Stain”). But I found the shortlist intriguing – All four of the runners-up were short story collections: Charles D’Ambrosio ”The Dead Fish Museum” Deborah Eisenberg ”Twilight of the Superheroes” Amy Hempel ”The Collected […]
So Richard Powers just won the National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Echo Maker. In a field without the literary power-sluggers of the year (like The Road by Cormac cheapest pharmacy in california McCarthy and Everyman by Philip Roth), Powers was the early favorite (and Mark Danielewski’s Only Revolutions was the oddball). […]
The New York Times poll-cum-popularity-contest that elected Toni Morrison’s Beloved as the winner now has an copycat. The Brits couldn’t resist the allure of staging their own survey, and canvassed famous authors for their “best of” between 1980 and 2005. Here’s the Guardian article. Much as I think the contest misses the mark of nailing […]
Kiran Desai won the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss. She’s 35 – the youngest writer ever to win, but youngish-ness is what you have after eliminating David Mitchell and Peter Carey. The Indian-born writer’s mother, Anita Desai, had been shortlisted three times but failed to win. Now we’ve seen examples […]
The Longlist (19 books) is out for the Man Booker Prize, and boy do I want David Mitchell to win (he’s given a 6 to 1 chance by betting companies!). Peter Carey’s won it twice already, so honestly – that’s enough. And besides, he’s often overrated (sorry Carey fans). Even though Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas is […]
