Man Booker Prize 2011 Longlist Announced

The longlist for the 2011 Man Booker Prize was unveiled today. This year’s judging panel, chaired by former Director- General of MI5 Dame Stella Rimington, have chosen an eclectic thirteen titles from one hundred and thirty eight candidates including four debut novelists, three Canadian authors, three publishers who have never before had a title nominated, one previous winner in Alan Hollinghurst and three times (now four times) nominated Julian Barnes.

Judges Stella Rimmington, editor of the Spectator Matthew d’Ancona, author Susan Hill, journalist and politician Chris Mullin and the Daily Telegraph’s Gaby Wood had the task of choosing the final diverse thirteen titles. Dame Stella commented:

'We are delighted by the quality and breadth of our long list, which emerged from an impassioned discussion. The list ranges from the Wild West to multi-ethnic London via post-Cold War Moscow and Bucharest, and includes four first novels.' 

Only four of the thirteen authors have featured on the long list previously: Hollinghurst who won the award in 2004 for The Line of Beauty, literary favourite Julian Barnes and Irish writer Sebastian Barry, who won the Costa Prize in 2009 with The Secret Scripture. Book makers are currently favouring Hollinghurst’s latest novel The Stranger’s Child to win the prize, offering odds of 5/1.

This year’s longlist also promotes a marked shift towards smaller publishers, reflecting the changing face of the publishing industry. Welsh publisher Seren Books, Oxfordshire based Oneworld Publications and the Scottish Sandstone Press each have a title present in the longlist, drawing unprecedented attention to the blossoming trade in alternative and independent publishing.

The 2010 prize was awarded to Howard Jacobson for his comic The Finkler Question. The 2011 short list will be announced on the 6^th of September.

The Man Booker Prize Longlist 2011

• Julian Barnes - The Sense of an Ending - (Jonathan Cape -Random House) 3 previous nominations.
• Sebastian Barry - On Canaan’s Side -  (Faber) 2 previous nominations.
• Carol Birch -Jamrach’s Menagerie - (Canongate Books) 1 previous nomination
• Patrick deWitt - The Sisters Brothers - ( Granta)
• Esi Edugyan - Half Blood Blues - (Serpent’s Tail- Profile)
• Yvette Edwards - A Cupboard Full of Coats - (Oneworld) Debut Novel
• Alan Hollinghurst - The Stranger’s Child - (Picador- Pan Macmillan) 2 previous nominations
• Stephen Kelman - Pigeon English - (Bloomsbury) Debut Novel
• Patrick McGuinness - The Last Hundred Days - (Seren Books) Debut Novel
• A.D. Miller – Snowdrops - (Atlantic) Debut Novel
• Alison Pick - Far to Go - (Headline Review)
• Jane Rogers - The Testament of Jessie Lamb - (Sandstone Press)
• D.J. Taylor - Derby Day - (Chatto & Windus- Random House)

Jack Reacher Scoops Lee Child Crime Writer of the Year Award

Photo by Steve_C on Flickr

Lee Child has been named as Crime Writer of the year award at the Harrogate Literary Festival with his latest novel 61 Hours.

The popular writer of the Jack Reacher series of books was honoured by the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel award this weekend. The fictional American crime detective has cemented Child’s reputation as a class crime writer; a copy of one of his Reacher series is sold every few seconds. Child is also the first British author to have sold over a million Amazon Kindle e-books. This popularity is set to soar higher with the release of a film based on the first Reacher book, One Shot, starring Tom Cruise as the hero.

It is the first time Child has won the award, beating the likes of twice previous winner Mark Billingham, Tess Gerritsen and Linwood Barclay.

The event also saw PD James honoured with a lifetime achievement award for her outstanding contribution to crime writing. Baroness James has been publishing crime novels for over fifty years with the her most famous detective, Adam Dalgliesh , featuring in her debut, Cover Her Face published in 1962.

Samuel Johnson Prize Awarded to Mao's Great Famine

Mao's image still looms large in modern China (photo by bokurdotnet)

The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction has been awarded to Frank Dikotter for his seminal work on the life and of Chairman Mao, titled Mao’s Great Famine. The Dutch historian beat five other short listed titles including a biography of Caravaggio and a study of Bismarck’s life to claim the £20,000 prize.

Focusing on the so called ‘Great Leap Forward’ which took place between 1958 and 1962, the book studies Mao Zedong’s attempt to ‘overtake’ the British Economy within a fifteen year period which resulted in widespread hardship, famine and directly led to the death of over 45 million people.

Chair of this year’s judging panel, Ben Macintyre, describes the Mao’s Great Famine as ‘ an epic record of human folly’, going as far as to claim that the study ‘casts Chinese history in a radical new light, with a devastating psychological portrait of the dictator’.

The prize is the largest awarded for non fiction within the UK and is open to all non fiction genres.

Each of the short listed authors (see below) also received £1000 in prize money for their titles.

Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2011 Shortlist was:

• Mao’s Great Famine by Frank Dikötter (Bloomsbury)
• Caravaggio: A Life Sacred and Profane by Andrew Graham Dixon (Allen Lane)
• Liberty’s Exiles by Maya Jasanoff (HarperPress)
• The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley (Fourth Estate)
• Bismarck: A Life by Jonathan Steinberg (Oxford University Press)
• Reprobates by John Stubbs (Viking)

Restless - William Boyd : Review

A very modern spy novel, Restless won William Boyd the Costa Novel Award in 2006. Set across two time frames, it tells the story of a young woman recruited as a British Spy during the Second World War and the consequences of her actions as she relates her hidden past to her twenty something daughter in seventies Oxford. Switching between the past and the literary present, we learn more about the relationship between mother (Sally/ 

Eva Delectorskaya) and daughter (Ruth Gilmartin) as well as the complicated web of history they find themselves in.

Eva Delectroskaya is approached shortly after her beloved brother’s death by a British spy looking to utilise her international childhood and language skills in the upcoming war effort against Germany. Jump forward to 1976 to find Eva living a quiet life under the name of Sally Gilmartin, with no one, not even her daughter, knowing anything about her past life. Ruth is more than a little surprised to be handed a first hand account, a chapter at a time, of her mother’s past. Slowly, details unfold of the schemes and plots that Eva/Sally was involved in as it becomes apparent that her past is coming back to haunt her.

Meanwhile, Ruth has been struggling with the fallout of her father’s sudden death which led her to flee to a progressive academic life in Germany and an affair with a married man that resulted in the birth of her son, Jochen. Stuck between writing a PHD on a subject she’s not very interested in and teaching English to foreign students to make ends meet, Ruth is pulled from her now boring existence into her mother’s intriguing past.

For a novel with such a complex plotlines, it’s a surprisingly easy read. It would make an excellent beach read.  There’s a romantic sub-plot between Eva and the enigmatic man who recruited her, Romer, but above all else this is a spy novel, one that asks its readers to question the nature of trust and the motives of all the characters  found within it. The momentum of the story is fast: Ruth and in turn the reader, is exposed to revelation after revelation as Sally/Eva casually presents her with the next chapters in her story. Rather than disrupting the narrative flow, the choice to alternate the storylines by chapter aids in unravelling the complexities of Eva’s story. The much more sedate and mundane aspects of Ruth’s life allow a little breathing space from the intrigue and rich detail and often Ruth’s reactions to the latest chapter of her mother’s story help the reader tease out all of the important details which the latest instalment has revealed. This can sometimes lead to the Ruth story arc being overshadowed, despite having an interesting sub-plot about German political intrigue which could have been developed further. It’s a shame that all the intricacies of Ruth’s story suffer as a result, but Restless is Eva’s, not Ruth’s story and consequently, the main focus of attention is turned to her.

A vastly entertaining read, Boyd keeps his readers on the edge of their seats in anticipation as he cleverly unravels events. The pacing throughout is flawless and building the plot around lesser known historical details of the activities of the British Secret Service before and during the Second World War adds an exciting twist to a time period and subject matter which has been used time and again.