Next by James Hynes has been named the winner of The Believer Book Award, and it was announced Friday that Thomas Teal’s translation from the Swedish of Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver took home the Best Translated Book Award. The book was competing with a shortlist of ten novels in translation.
Weekend Prizewinners
Plea of Innocence
Recommended Reading: On the ethics of self-publishing or: Can a convicted serial killer publish his version of the story?
Perhaps They’re More Into Non-Fiction
I’m neither a therapist nor a zoologist, but maybe if we want to ward off midlife crises in great apes, we should stop reading them so much Jane Austen.
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Outline, Detailed
The Billionaire Speaks
“It’s true that when the world did not end when I predicted it would, at the end of last year, in my Netflix special Ragnarok, I realized a number of things, one of which was that I had not made a lot of professional or creative plans on the contingency that the world would continue. I just figured that it would end.” Greg Hunter talks with John Hodgman at The Rumpus.
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Hage Wins the IMPAC
This year’s IMPAC shortlist was quite eclectic, as we noted when it was released. One side effect of this is that the 2008 IMPAC won’t have an impact on the “Prizewinners” tally that we keep. The upshot, of course, is that the IMPAC shed its spotlight on some less well-known names, including this year’s winner: Beirut-born, Canadian novelist Rawi Hage, who won for his debut effort, DeNiro’s Game.Andrew reviewed the book for us last year, writing “Less a political tract than a survival story, DeNiro’s Game illustrates how a war breeds anarchy which then gives way to militia rule.” Elsewhere, The Globe and Mail covers the award and offers an excerpt from Hage’s acceptance speech.
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Pulitzer Playlist
Soundtracks make for excellent background music when writing a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Junot Díaz wrote his first book with the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack on loop, he said during an interview with The Daily Beast.
The Story Prize 2011 Shortlist
The Story Prize has announced its nominees for the 2011 prize, We Others by Steven Millhauser, Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman, The Angel Esmeralda by Don DeLillo. Our review of the latter was published today.
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