Oldest books prize seeks best ever winner | Books | guardian.co.uk
Established in 1919, the James Tait Black prize for best novel has honoured names in the past including DH Lawrence, Walter de la Mare and Siegfried Sassoon. Now, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of English literature study at Edinburgh University, students at the university have chosen their six favourite winners of the prize to compete for the one-off accolade of best of the best. Only half of the shortlist – Cormac McCarthy, Caryl Phillips and James Kelman – are still living: Carter died in 1992, Greene in 1991 and the final author in the running, Muriel Spark, in 2006.
The shortlist pits Carter's Nights at the Circus, the story of part-woman, part-swan circus star Fevvers, which won the James Tait Black in 1984, against Greene's 1948 winner The Heart of the Matter, which tells of an honest police officer, Henry Scobie, in wartime west Africa. Spark is in the running for her 1965 winner The Mandelbaum Gate, about a woman engaged to an archaeologist who visits Jerusalem and befriends a diplomat.
McCarthy was chosen for his 2006 winner The Road, the story of a boy and his father travelling across an apocalyptic landscape, Kelman for his 1989 winner A Disaffection, about a rebellious teacher, and Phillips for 1993's Crossing the River, which opens as a father is forced to sell his children into slavery....
more... http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/22/oldest-books-prize-best-ever-winner?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fbooks%2Frss+%28Books%29
James Tait Black Memorial Prizes website
The Independent
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