The Man Booker prize longlist for 2010 announced 27-7-2010

The Booker prize longlist: your verdict? | Books | guardian.co.uk

Man Booker Dozen announced
27 July 2010
see:http://www.themanbookerprize.com/news/stories/1427

The judges for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction today, Tuesday 27 July, announce the longlist for the prize, the leading literary award in the English speaking world.

A total of 138 books, 14 of which were called in by the judges, were considered for the ‘Man Booker Dozen' longlist of 13 books.

The longlist includes:***Many of these are in our library

Peter Carey Parrot and Olivier in America (Faber and Faber)*** Australian

Olivier is a young aristocrat, one of an endangered species born in France just after the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant English printer, wanted to be an artist but has ended up in middle age as a servant.

Emma Donoghue Room (Pan MacMillan - Picador)

Helen Dunmore The Betrayal (Penguin - Fig Tree)***

Leningrad in 1952: a city recovering from war, where Andrei, a young hospital doctor and Anna, a nursery school teacher, are forging a life together. Summers at the dacha, preparations for the hospital ball, work and the care of sixteen year old Kolya fill their minds. The extraordinary sequel to 'The Siege'.

Damon Galgut In a Strange Room (Grove Atlantic - Atlantic Books)***

A young man takes three journeys, through Greece, India and Africa. He travels lightly, simply. To those who travel with him and those whom he meets on the way - including a handsome, enigmatic stranger, a group of careless backpackers and a woman on the edge - he is the Follower, the Lover and the Guardian. Yet, despite the man's best intentions, each journey ends in disaster. Together, these three journeys will change his whole life.

Howard Jacobson The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury)

Andrea Levy The Long Song
(Headline Publishing Group - Headline Review)***
see more --
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/07/the-long-song-andrea-levy

Tom McCarthy C (Random House - Jonathan Cape)

David Mitchell The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Hodder & Stoughton - Sceptre)***
A love story from 18th century Japan confirms David Mitchell as the most dazzling British novelist of his generation see--http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/09/thousand-autumns-jacob-zoet-mitchell
see:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/mitchelld/1000aut.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5kEtjTdvMo - youtube video

Lisa Moore February (Random House - Chatto & Windus)

Paul Murray Skippy Dies (Penguin - Hamish Hamilton)***
Ruprecht Van Doren is an overweight genius whose hobbies include very difficult maths and the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. Daniel 'Skippy' Juster is his roommate. In the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys, nobody pays either of them much attention.

Rose Tremain Trespass (Random House - Chatto & Windus)***

In a silent valley stands an isolated stone farmhouse, the Mas Lunel. Its owner is Aramon Lunel, an alcoholic. Into this closed Cevenol world comes Anthony Verey, a wealthy antiques dealer from London. From the moment he arrives at the Mas Lunel, a frightening and unstoppable series of consequences is set in motion.

Christos Tsiolkas The Slap (Grove Atlantic - Tuskar Rock)***Australian

At a barbecue attended by a group of family and friends, an adult slaps an unrelated young child. The child is three year old Hugo who has been misbehaving throughout the barbecue with no restraint from his parents, "the steely-eyed Rosie and the wimpish Gary".^[1] The adult is Harry, cousin of the barbecue host and adulterous businessman, and whose slightly older son, Rocco, is being threatened by Hugo. This event sends the large cast of characters "into a spiral, agonising and arguing over the notion that striking a child can ever be justified. Some believe a naughty boy should be taught some discipline, others maintain the police ought to be brought in to investigate a common assault"^[1] with a range of positions in between.
see more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Slap

Alan Warner The Stars in the Bright Sky
(Random House - Jonathan Cape)***


The Sopranos are back: out of school and out in the world, gathered in Gatwick to plan a super-cheap last-minute holiday to celebrate their reunion. Kay, Kylah, Manda, Rachel and Finn are joined by Finn's equally gorgeous friend Ava - a half-French philosophy student - and are ready to go on the rampage.

The chair of judges, Andrew Motion, comments:

"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."

Peter Carey is one of only two authors to have won the prize twice, in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. In 1985 his book Illywhacker was shortlisted for the prize and Theft: A Love Story was longlisted in 2006.

Three authors have been shortlisted before: David Mitchell (twice shortlisted in 2001 for number9dream and in 2004 for Cloud Atlas), Damon Galgut (in 2003 for The Good Doctor) and Rose Tremain (shortlisted in 1989 for Restoration). She was also a judge for the Booker Prize in 1988 and 2000.

Howard Jacobson has been longlisted twice for his book Kalooki Nights in 2006 and for Who's Sorry Now? in 2002.

The 2010 shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 7 September at a press conference at Man Group's London headquarters. The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2010 will be revealed on Tuesday 12 October at a dinner at London's Guildhall and will be broadcast on the BBC Ten O'Clock News.

The winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction will receive £50,000 and can look forward to greatly increased sales and worldwide recognition. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, will receive £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their shortlisted book.

Chaired by Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate, the 2010 judges are Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.

PM's Literary Awards shortlist announced - Sydney Morning Herald

PM's Literary Awards shortlist announced - Sydney Morning Herald

http://www.arts.gov.au/books/pmliteraryawards10

2010 Prime Minister's Literary Awards

The Prime Minister's Literary Awards celebrate the contribution of Australian literature to the nation's cultural and intellectual life. The awards, held annually, recognise literature's importance to our national identity, community and economy.

2010 shortlists announced

The 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Awards Fiction, Non-Fiction, Young Adult Fiction and Children’s Fiction shortlists have been announced.

Nine children's fiction and seven young adult fiction works, as well as seven fiction and six non-fiction works have made the 2010 shortlist, selected from more than 320 entries.

Children's fiction

• Cicada Summer by Kate Constable
• The Terrible Plop by Ursula Dubosarsky and illustrator Andrew Joyner
• Just Macbeth by Andy Griffiths and illustrator Terry Denton
• Mr Chicken goes to Paris by Leigh Hobbs
• Running with the Horses by Alison Lester
• Star Jumps by Lorraine Marwood
• Mannie and the Long Brave Day by Martine Murray and illustrator Sally Rippin
• Tensy Farlow and the Home for Mislaid Children by Jen Storer
• Harry and Hopper by Margaret Wild and illustrator Freya Blackwood

Fiction

• Summertime by J. M. Coetzee
• The Book of Emmett by Deborah Forster
• The Lakewoman by Alan Gould
• Dog Boy by Eva Hornung
• Ransom by David Malouf
• Lovesong by Alex Miller
• As the Earth turns Silver by Alison Wong

Non-fiction

• The Water Dreamers: The Remarkable History of Our Dry Continent by Michael Cathcart
• Strange Places: A Memoir of Mental Illness by Will Elliott
• The Colony: A History of Early Sydney by Grace Karskens
• The Life and Death of Democracy by John Keane
• The Blue Plateau: A Landscape Memoir by Mark Tredinnick
• The Ghost at the Wedding by Shirley Walker

Young adult fiction

• Stolen by Lucy Christopher
• The Winds of Heaven by Judith Clarke
• Confessions of a Liar, Thief and Failed Sex God by Bill Condon
• The Museum of Mary Child by Cassandra Golds
• Swerve by Phillip Gwynne
• Jarvis 24 by David Metzenthen
• Beatle meets Destiny by Gabrielle Williams

Have you read the 2010 Pulitzer Prize winner yet

Awarded to "Tinkers," by Paul Harding (Bellevue Literary Press), a powerful celebration of life in which a New England father and son, through suffering and joy, transcend their imprisoning lives and offer new ways of perceiving the world and mortality.

Finalists--

Love in Infant Monkeys by Lydia Millet (Soft Skull Press)

An imaginative collection of linked stories, often describing a memorable encounter between a famous person and an animal, underscoring the human folly of longing for significance while chasing trifles.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (W.W. Norton & Company)

A collection of beautifully crafted stories that exposes the Western reader to the hopes, dreams and dramas of an array of characters in feudal Pakistan, resulting in both an aesthetic and cultural achievement.

Philip Gross wins the Wales Book of the Year award

Philip Gross wins the Wales Book of the Year award for
I Spy Pinhole Eye

Although it was Gross's work that the judges were rewarding, the poet, novelist and dramatist said the book would never have happened without Denison's "extraordinary" photographs. "I've never been the kind of writer who goes out to find big themes and issues. Essentially, if you find a lump of rock and look at it with enough intent, it will eventually tell you everything you need to know about the world – as happened with this," said Gross. "What we started from here isn't even a pylon, it is the lump of concrete the pylon stands in, literally as down-to-earth as you can get. The message is, you can look at anything – what gets you there is your way of looking."
more at---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/01/philip-gross-wales-book-award?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fbooks%2Frss+%28Books%29

sample poem--

Seeing

Seeing, only seeing

is the hush that comes upon us
in the camera obscura,

round the battered
shallow bowl of a world

with woods and wind and
people seething in it,

seeing them not seeing ...

We’re the back row
of the silent picture palace,

the usherette’s torch,
the zippo spark,

the cigarette tip glowing
here in Plato’s cave.

see here for the remarkable photos and more sample poems---

http://www.simondenison.co.uk/ispy.html

What was lost - Catherine O'Flynn and The News Where You Are

Additional information for this title

Main Title: What was lost / Catherine O'Flynn. Author: O'Flynn, Catherine Imprint: Carlton North, Vic. : Scribe, 2008, c2007. Collation: 242 p. ; 20 cm. Notes: Previously published: Birmingham : Tindal Street, 2007. ISBN: 9781921215889 (pbk) Dewey Class: 823.92 Language: English Subject: Shopping centers -- Fiction Missing persons -- Fiction Mystery fiction Average Rating: No reviews available as yet Add your review BRN: 200571 More Information: More about this book in Google Book Search View more information in LibraryThing - 798 entries, 52 reviews

What Was Lost is a 2007 novel by Catherine O'Flynn. It is O'Flynn's début novel. It is about a girl who goes missing in a shopping centre in 1984, and the people who try to discover what happened to her twenty years later. What Was Lost won the First Novel Award at the 2007 Costa Book Awards, and was short-listed for the overall Costa Book of the Year Award.^[1]

more details at----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Was_Lost

The News Where You Are by Catherine O'Flynn

The prize-winning author stares again into the dark heart of Birmingham,
more at---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/27/news-where-you-are-oflynn

Inside the world of Kate Greenaway winner Freya Blackwood

Inside the world of Kate Greenaway winner Freya Blackwood

Australian illustrator Freya Blackwood won the UK's most prestigious prize for a children's illustrator today for her book Harry & Hopper. Take a look at some of her pictures for the book, which tells the story of a little boy coming to terms with the death of his dog

http://www.freyablackwood.net/

Harry & Hopper
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Additional information for this title

Main Title: Harry & Hopper / Margaret Wild ; [illustrator] Freya Blackwood. Author: Wild, Margaret, 1948- Blackwood, Freya Edition: 1st ed. Imprint: Malvern, S. Aust. : Omnibus, 2009. Collation: 1 v. (unpaged) : col. ill. ; 25 x 26 cm. Summary: "Harry and Hopper do everything together. Hopper helps Harry with his homework and Harry helps Hopper escape from his weekly bath. At night, Hopper sneaks past Dad and goes to sleep in Harry's bed. One day, Harry comes home from school and his dog isn't there to greet him. Harry will never know the feel or the smell of Hopper again. But love is strong, and Hopper will stay with Harry as long as he needs him ..."--Provided by publisher. ISBN: 9781862917408 (hbk) Dewey Class: A823.4 A823.3 Language: English Added Title: Harry and Hopper Subject: Love -- Pictorial works -- Juvenile fiction Dogs -- Pictorial works -- Juvenile fiction Children's stories -- Pictorial works Average Rating: No reviews available as yet Add your review BRN: 221807 More Information: More about this book in Google Book Search View more information in LibraryThing - 5 entries, 1 reviews

The Miles Franklin Literary Award: Winner 2010 - Peter Temple for TRUTH-- comment, reviews, availability.

http://www.trust.com.au/awards/miles_franklin/

Miles Franklin winner shows 'great moral sophistication'

see full article at--
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s2934258.htm

Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Inspired by apocalyptic fire and corruption, the crime writer Peter Temple has tonight won Australia's most respected literary prize, the Miles Franklin Award.

The former journalist won for his novel 'Truth', the sequel to his 2005 book, 'The Broken Shore'.

'Truth' draws on Victoria's Black Saturday bushfires as the setting for a story about murder and betrayal.

PETER TEMPLE, 2010 MILES FRANKLIN WINNER: Absolutely thrilled. Totally unexpected. Absolutely thrilled. I think to find myself joining Patrick White and a lot of other great names there is something that never crossed my mind would happen.

LEIGH SALES: The Miles Franklin judges say 'Truth' fuses an exhilarating complex crime narrative with lives broken, patched and tested against the background of the bushfires.

Peter Temple's novel was one of six books shortlisted for the prize
______________________________________________________

MELBOURNE author Peter Temple last night became the first thriller writer to take out the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Accepting the $42,000 award among a who's who of Australian publishing at a dinner at the State Library of NSW in Sydney, Temple said: "Shock is the word." He joked that Australia's first Nobel laureate, Patrick White, would find it "unthinkable" that a crime writer had won the prize.

read more at:--

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/thriller-muscles-in-on-miles-franklin/story-e6frg8n6-1225882981755

______________________________________________________________

Crime novel defies convention to win Miles Franklin

see full article in SMH--
http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/crime-novel-defies-convention-to-win-miles-franklin-20100622-yvrf.html
_____________________________________________________________
Ryde Library has 14 books of Peter Temple. Truth has at least 11 reserves on it.
___________________________________________________________________
Buying Truth - here is the list from Booko -
http://www.booko.com.au/books/isbn/9781921520716

click on image to enlarge.


Reviews of Truth by Peter Temple

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/books/harsh-heart-of-the-truth/2009/09/25/1253813603728.html

http://reviews.media-culture.org.au/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3799

http://textpublishing.com.au/books-and-authors/book/truth/ - what the papers have said--

Interview: José Saramago | Books | The Guardian

Interview: José Saramago | Books | The Guardian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Saramago

José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE (Portuguese pronunciation: [ʒuˈzɛ sɐɾɐˈmaɣu]; (16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor.

Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. His books have been translated into 25 languages.^[1] He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others. In 1992, the Portuguese government, under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from the European Literary Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Saramago complained of censorship^[2] and moved to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Spain, where he resided until his death.^[3][4]

Our library has two of his books: Blindness, 1998 and Death at Intervals, 2008 - superb reading.

Hilary Mantel wins Walter Scott historical fiction prize for Wolf Hall

Hilary Mantel wins Walter Scott historical fiction prize for Wolf Hall
This is a must read book: extraordinary -
There have been maybe still are cheap copies for sale in BigW, at least - if you can't wait to read it and want to own a copy to pass around among your friends.


Here is an account of Wolf Hall from

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - check out more detail there and also follow through to look up Hilary Mantel and her other writings.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf_Hall

Wolf Hall (2009) is a novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate. It won both the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.^[1][2] Set in the 1520s and 1530s, the novel is about the rapid rise to power of Thomas Cromwell in the Tudor court of King Henry VIII. Born to a lower-class family of no position or name, Cromwell first became the right-hand of Cardinal Wolsey, and then, after Wolsey's fall from grace, the chief minister to Henry VIII. In that role, he oversaw the break with Rome, the dissolution of the monasteries, and Henry's marriage to Anne Boleyn. He was widely hated in his lifetime, and historical and literary accounts in the subsequent centuries have not been kind to Cromwell; in Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons, for example, he is portrayed as the calculating, unprincipled opposite of Thomas More's honour and rectitude.

Mantel's novel offers a corrective to that impression, an intimate and more rounded portrait of Cromwell and the political machinations of Henry's court. Mantel spent five years researching and writing the book, and the trickiest part, she said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal,^[3] was trying to match her version to the historical record. To avoid contradicting history, she created a card catalogue, organized alphabetically by character, with each card containing notes showing where a particular historical figure was on relevant dates. "You really need to know, where is the Duke of Suffolk at the moment? You can't have him in London if he's supposed to be somewhere else," she explained.

The title comes from the name of the Seymours' family seat Wolfhall or Wulfhall in Wiltshire; the title's allusion to the old Latin saying "Man is wolf to man" serves as a constant reminder of the dangerously opportunistic nature of the world through which Cromwell navigates.^[4]

Miles Franklin Literary Award winner announced 22 June, 2010 at the NSW State Library.

The Miles Franklin Literary Award celebrates Australian character and creativity and nurtures the continuing life of literature about Australia. It is awarded for the novel of the year which is of the highest literary merit and presents Australian life in any of its phases. Prizemoney: $42,000.
see http://www.trust.com.au/philanthropy/awards/miles_franklin/2010/shortlist/

All these books are in our excellent library.
SHORTLIST:

• Lovesong, Alex Miller: is a story of marriage, of people coming undone by desire, of ordinary lives and death, love and struggle, told in Miller’s distinct voice which is filled with intelligence, clarity and compassion.

• The Bath Fugues, Brian Castro: is a meditation on melancholy and art, in the form of three interwoven novellas; each dealing with questions of deception and discovery and each stretching the bonds of trust and friendship.
• 
  
• Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey: When Jasper Jones visits Charlie Bucktin on a hot summer night in 1965, Charlie bears witness to Jasper’s horrible discovery and in the summer where everything changes, Charlie learns why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his heart.
• 
  
• The Book of Emmett, Deborah Foster: Emmett Brown is dark and moody – but also a waylaid romantic with one hand on his Hemingway and the other around a bottle. As he becomes a terror to his wife and children, his family form bonds which are complex, strong and impossible to break. As Emmett lays dying, they come to discover love – however imperfect – is the best protection.
• 
  
• Truth, Peter Temple: is the much anticipated sequel to The Broken Shore and is a novel about murder, corruption, family, friends, honour, honesty, deceit, love, betrayal – and truth.
• 
  
• Butterfly, Sonya Hartnett: – On the verge of her fourteenth birthday, Plum knows her life will change. But she has no idea how. Over the coming weeks, her neighbour will show her how she might fly, her brother will court catastrophe in worlds she barely knows exist and her enemies will try to lead her on and take her down. Who forgets what happens when you’re fourteen?
• 
  
• see this site for more detail----
  

http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/miles-franklin-shortlist-2010/

Irish poet awarded international prize - Irish Times

Irish poet awarded international prize - Irish Times

ONE OF Ireland’s finest poets, Eiléan Ní Chuilleanain, has been awarded the 2010 Griffin Poetry Prize for her most recent collection, The Sun-Fish . At a ceremony in Canada earlier this week, Ní Chuilleanain (68) received the international prize worth $65,000 (€49,000 ).

http://www.griffinpoetryprize.com/shortlist_2010.php?t=6

On Lacking the Killer Instinct

One hare, absorbed, sitting still,
Right in the grassy middle of the track,
I met when I fled up into the hills, that time
My father was dying in a hospital –
I see her suddenly again, borne back
By the morning paper–s prize photograph;
Two greyhounds tumbling over, absurdly gross,
While the hare shoots off to the left, her bright eye
Full not only of speed and fear
But surely in the moment a glad power,

Like my father–s, running from a lorry-load of soldiers
In nineteen twenty-one, nineteen years old, never
Such gladness, he said, cornering in the narrow road
Between high hedges, in summer dusk.
The hare
Like him should never have been coursed,
But, clever, she gets off; another day
She–ll fool the stupid dogs, double back
On her own scent, downhill, and choose her time
To spring away out of the frame, all while
The pack is labouring up.
The lorry was growling
And he was clever, he saw a house
And risked an open kitchen door. The soldiers
Found six people in a country kitchen, one
Drying his face, dazed-looking, the towel
Half covering his face. The lorry left,
The people let him sleep there, he came out
Into a blissful dawn. Should he have chanced that door?
If the sheltering house had been burned down, what good
Could all his bright running have done
For those that harboured him?
And I should not
Have run away, but I went back to the city
Next morning, washed in brown bog water, and
I thought about the hare, in her hour of ease.

From The Sun-fish, by Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin
© Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin 2009

The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker wins 2010 IMPAC Prize

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0617/breaking58.html
Impac 2010 winner announced

Related Audio

Audio analysis: Eileen Battersby, Literary Correspondent

Download this clip (MP3 format)

EILEEN BATTERSBY, Literary Correspondent

Gerbrand Bakker has become the first Dutch writer to win the International Impac Dublin Literary Award from a shortlist of seven other titles including Joseph O’Neill’s Netherland .

Bakker (48) won the world’s richest literary prize for a single work of fiction after a long selection process begun late last year when more than 160 titles were nominated by libraries across the world



SEE Reviews---
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/niederld/bakkerg.htm

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-twin--by-gerbrand-bakker-trans-david-colmer-836320.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/29/twin-gerbrand-bakker-review




http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/17/gerbrand-bakker-impac-prize

Dutch gardener reaps Impac prize

Gerbrand Bakker's 'wonderful' debut novel, set on a bleak farm, has beaten established authors to clinch the world's biggest literary prize, of €100,000

• 
  
• see more at The Guardian:

• Alison Flood
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 June 2010 19.30 BST

Bridging cultures ... Dublin's city libraries organise the Impac's worldwide literary search Photograph: Chris Bacon/PA

A "restrained, sparely written" debut novel by a Dutch author and part-time gardener has beaten Marilynne Robinson's Orange prize-winning Home and Joseph O'Neill's Booker-longlisted Netherland to win the world's richest book prize, the International Impac Dublin literary award.

1. The Twin
2. by Gerbrand Bakker
3. 288pp,
4. 

1. Buy The Twin at the Guardian bookshop

Gerbrand Bakker's The Twin (Boven is het stil), in which protagonist Helmer is forced to return to his family's small farm in the bleak Dutch countryside after his twin brother dies in a car accident, was named winner of the €100,000 Impac prize in Dublin this evening. The award is unique in that public libraries around the world nominate titles they think should win – The Twin was proposed by libraries in Amsterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Eindhoven – after which an international judging panel select the winner, this year from a shortlist of eight.

The Twin, a novel by the Dutch writer Gerbrand Bakker has won this year’s International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

When his twin brother dies in a car accident, Helmer is obliged to return from university life to take over his brother’s role on the small family farm, resigning himself to spending the rest of his days ‘with his head under a cow.’

The novel begins thirty years later with Helmer moving his invalid father upstairs to have him out of the way as he sparsely redecorates the downstairs, finally making it his own. Then one day Riet, the woman who had once been engaged to marry Helmer’s twin, appears and asks if she and her troubled eighteen-year-old son could come to live with them on the farm.

Ostensibly a novel about the countryside, The Twin is ultimately about the possibility or impossibility of taking life into one’s own hands. It chronicles a way of life that has resisted modernity, a world culturally apart yet laden with romantic longing.

Read more: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2010/06/17/dutch-writer-gerbrand-bakker-wins-2010-impac-dublin-literary-award/#ixzz0r9TFw3sb



Yes The Twin is in our library



See reviews:

Nobel prize winner for literature 2010: Herta Muller- remarkable writing.

Remarkable writing.
These books are in our library.

The Lacuna : Orange Prize WINNER

http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/show/feature/orange-2010-winner -see Orange Prize site for details, video, etc.

Barbara Kingsolver: from witch hunt to winner - see the article and others--
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/10/barbara-kingsolver-orange-prize?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fbooks%2Frss+%28Books%29

Barbara Kingsolver: from witch hunt to winner

This week's Orange prize winner talks to Kira Cochrane about communism, Frida Kahlo – and the hate mail she received after 9/1

• • guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 June 2010 18.36 BST

Barbara Kingsolver…'I took the bile and made something beautiful.' Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

It was the winter of 2001, and the popular novelist Barbara Kingsolver was facing a deluge of hate mail. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks she had written a series of opinion pieces for US newspapers, urging contemplation and debate, and her ideas (the suggestion, for instance, that "in critical times, our leaders need most to be influenced by the moderating force of dissent") were proving seriously unpopular. see whole article

The Lacuna, her first novel for 10 years, takes in the Mexican revolution, the exile of Trotsky in Mexico City, the First World War and the communist witch-hunts in 1950s America. It is an admirably ambitious work spanning a fascinating period of history see more--
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/08/the-lacuna-barbara-kingsolver

YES _ its in our library but there are about 20 reserves on it--

The lacuna : a novel
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Additional information for this title

Main Title: The lacuna : a novel / by Barbara Kingsolver. Author: Kingsolver, Barbara Edition: 1st ed. Imprint: New York : Harper, 2009. Collation: 507 p. ; 24 cm. Summary: "The story of Harrison William Shepherd, a man caught between two worlds -- Mexico and the United States in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s -- and whose search for identity takes readers to the heart of the twentieth century's most tumultuous events"--Provided by publisher. ISBN: 9780060852573 (hardback) 9780571252640 (pbk) Dewey Class: 813.54 LC Class: PS3561.I496 Language: English Subject: Americans -- Mexico -- Fiction Identity (Psychology) -- Fiction Subversive activities -- Fiction Mexico -- History -- 1910-1946 -- Fiction North Carolina -- History -- 20th century -- Fiction Biographical fiction Historical fiction Epistolary fiction Average Rating: No reviews available as yet Add your review BRN: 232238 More Information: More about this book in Google Book Search View more information in LibraryThing - 965 entries, 67 reviews

Holdings:
SEE Library Things- http://www.librarything.com/work/8415466 for reviews of it by readers and also Goodreads -http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6433752-the-lacuna


What is the Orange Prize---
The Orange Prize for Fiction (known as the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction from 2007 to 2008) is one of the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary prizes,^[1][2][3] annually awarded to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English, and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year.
see full details at---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_Prize_for_Fiction

Orange Prize NEWS ITEMS TODAY---

click on image to enlarge.

SKULDUGGERY PLEASANT - Irish Book of the Decade

Landy wins book of decade award

PAMELA NEWENHAM

see article in the Irish Times:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0531/breaking55_pf.html

Mon, May 31, 2010

Comic-fantasy novel Skulduggery Pleasant was today announced the winner of the Irish Book of the Decade competition.

The book by Dubliner Derek Landy topped an internet poll to decide the nation’s favourite Irish book, with almost 5,000 votes cast over the last month.

“The wonderful thing about this award is that it was open to every category, and so books for younger readers were as relevant as adult literary novels,” Mr Landy said.

Alastair Giles, executive director of the Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Awards said two thirds of the novels on the 50-strong shortlist were literary novels by giants such as John McGahern, Anne Enright, Colm Tobin and William Trevor. "By beating such opposition in the poll, Derek Landy has shown us how young readers can be energised to care about books and reading," he said.

The shortlist touched on all points in between John Banville’s Booker-winning meditation of art and mortality The Sea and Cecilia Ahern’s wildly popular chick-lit PS I Love You .

It included John McGahern’s Memoir , Diarmaid Ferriter’s Judging Dev , Keane , by Roy Keane, John Boyne’s The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Should Have Got Off at Sydney Parade by the laureate of the noughties, Ross O’Carroll-Kelly.

Other popular fiction writers in the shortlist included Maeve Binchy (Heart and Soul ) Cathy Kelly (Lessons in Heartbreak ) and Marian Keyes (This Charming Man ).

© 2010 irishtimes.com

Yes its in our library------

Additional information
for this title

Main Title:		Skulduggery Pleasant : playing with fire / Derek Landy.
Author:		Landy, Derek
Imprint:		London : HarperCollins Children's Books, 2008.
Collation:		350 p. ; 25 cm.
Series Title:		Skulduggery Pleasant
Summary:		"With Serpine dead, the world is safe once more. At least, that's what Valkyrie and Skulduggery think, until the notorious Baron Vengeous makes a bloody escape from prison, and dead bodies and vampires start showing up all over Ireland." "With Baron Vengeous after the deadly armour of Lord Vile, and pretty much everyone out to kill Valkyrie, the daring detective duo face their biggest challenge yet. But what if the greatest threat to Valkyrie is just a little closer to home...?"--BOOK JACKET.
ISBN:		9780007257041 (pbk) 000725704X (pbk) 9780007257034 (hbk) 0007257031 (hbk)
Dewey Class:		823.92
Language:		English
Added Title:		Playing with fire
Subject:		Magic -- Juvenile fiction Vampires -- Juvenile fiction Young adult fiction
Average Rating:		No reviews available as yet Add your review
BRN:		204449
More Information:		More about this book in Google Book Search View more information in LibraryThing - 312 entries, 17 reviews

The Ondaatje prize, which goes to the book which has best evoked the spirit of a place.

See this article in the Guardian for the full story---
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/may/25/ian-thomson-wins-ondaatje-prize?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fbooks%2Frss+%28Books%29

Winner:

Ian Thomson wins £10,000 Ondaatje prize

The Dead Yard, Ian Thomson's book about the gritty underbelly of Jamaica, hailed for its candid portrait of a 'corrupted Eden'

BOOK TRAILER AWARDS by MobyLive

Book videos are being used to market books these days and so now we have had the first awards presented for the best and worst trailers in a range of categories.

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/and-the-award-for-best-book-trailer-goes-to/?src=mv

Here is the video which won the award for best big budget trailer by the NZ Book Council for Going West by much respected NZ author Maurice Gee.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_jyXJTlrH0

NZ Children's Book AWards 2010

http://www.booksellers.co.nz/awards/new-zealand-post-childrens-book-awards/winners-2010

Old Hu-Hu

Everyone loved Old Hu-Hu. But nobody loved him quite as much as little Hu-Hu-Tu. This is a beautiful story of death and the celebration of life, with powerful, evocative illustrations by Rachel Driscoll.

YiYun Li: The Vagrants and A Thousand Years of Good Prayers

both these book are in our library.
both these books are must reads.

Born to write

• Rowan Callick
• From: The Australian
• May 08, 2010 12:00AM

Chinese writer Yiyun Li has that rare ability to create luminous prose in a second language

see full article:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/born-to-write/story-e6frg8n6-1225862110562

WHEN Yiyun Li sat down at her computer and started to write stories, something remarkable happened.

She was born into a family of scientists in Beijing, and writing at all was aberrant. Yet she found herself writing, and not in Chinese but in English, a language she had only begun to learn, in a very formal manner, at school.

This was not merely utilitarian English. It was luminous, pared prose that almost immediately received praise from some of the world's toughest literary critics who compared her with Nobel prize winners J. M. Coetzee and Orhan Pamuk, among other writers. She has become part of that tiny elite whose stories and essays are published by The New Yorker.

Yiyun Li is at the Sydney Writers Festival this week May 16-23 2010. Check out their website for details.

http://www.swf.org.au/

also check out YiYun Li's website--

www.yiyunli.com

YiYun Li's favorite author: William Trevor. A number of his books in our library.

The are a number of interviews on You Tube: YiYun Liu has been in great demand :---
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=YiYun+Li+The+Vagrants&aq=f