Celestial Bodies, written by Jokha Alharthi and translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth, won the 2019 Man Booker International Prize.
The prize awards £50,000 to the best works of translated fiction from around the world, with prize money split evenly between translator and author. Alkharthi is the first female Omani novelist to be translated into English, and the first author from the Arabian Gulf to win the Man Booker International.
Bettany Hughes, who chaired the panel of five judges, said of the novel, “Its delicate artistry draws us into a richly imagined community—opening out to tackle profound questions of time and mortality and disturbing aspects of our shared history. The style is a metaphor for the subject, subtly resisting clichés of race, slavery and gender. The translation is precise and lyrical, weaving in the cadences of both poetry and everyday speech.Celestial Bodies evokes the forces that constrain us and those that set us free.”
‘Celestial Bodies’ Wins the Man Booker International Prize
2009 National Book Award Finalists Announced
Award season is hitting its stride, and this year’s National Book Award finalists have been announced. The big name among the fiction finalists is Column McCann. He is joined by an intriguing mix of newcomers and lesser known writers. Overall, it looks like the National Book Award is trying to push the envelope a bit this year, unsurprising with the likes of Junot Díaz and Lydia Millet on the judging panel. Not making the fiction cut are notable writers like Thomas Pynchon, Richard Russo, and Lorrie Moore. Here’s a list of the finalists in all four categories with bonus links and excerpts where available:
Fiction:
American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (excerpt, review, Most Anticipated)
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin (excerpt)
Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips (excerpt)
Far North by Marcel Theroux (excerpt)
Nonfiction:
Following the Water: A Hydromancer’s Notebook by David M. Carroll (excerpt)
Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species by Sean B. Carroll (excerpt)
Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin (excerpt)
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy by Adrienne Mayor (excerpt [pdf])
The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles (excerpt)
Poetry:
Versed by Rae Armantrout (excerpt)
Or to Begin Again by Ann Lauterbach (poem)
Speak Low by Carl Phillips (poem)
Open Interval by Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (poem [pdf])
Transcendental Studies: A Trilogy by Keith Waldrop (excerpt [pdf])
Young People’s Literature:
Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose
Stitches by David Small
Lips Touch: Three Times by Laini Taylor
Jumped by Rita Williams-Garcia
2014 National Book Critics Circle Award Finalists Announced
The finalists for the annual National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) Award have been announced. The fiction list is an eclectic five, in keeping with what is typically one of the more well-rounded fiction shortlists out there. Here are the finalists for fiction and non-fiction with excerpts and other links where available. In addition to the Fiction finalists, the John Leonard Prize, which goes to a debut work, was awarded to Phil Klay for Redeployment. Charles Finch was among the finalists for the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. In October, Finch published “The Truce Between Fabulism and Realism: On Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the Modern Novel” at The Millions.
Fiction
Rabih Alameddine, An Unnecessary Woman (Alameddine’s Year in Reading)
Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings (The Book Report: Episode 5)
Lily King, Euphoria (Celeste Ng’s Year in Reading)
Chang-Rae Lee, On Such a Full Sea (Bill Morris’s Year in Reading)
Marilynne Robinson, Lila (“Marilynne Robinson’s Singular Vision“)
Nonfiction
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation (excerpt)
Peter Finn and Petra Couvée, The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book (excerpt)
Elizabeth Kolbert, The Sixth Extinction (“Extinction Stories: The Ecological True-Crime Genre“)
Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (excerpt)
Hector Tobar, Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle that Set Them Free (excerpt)
For more on the NBCC Awards and the finalists in the other categories, visit the NBCC.
Awash in awards
Joseph Epstein (Fabulous Small Jews, Snobbery) takes a look at the glut of awards, literary and otherwise in a Wall Street Journal piece: “All this prize-giving has made the field of culture rather like one of those progressive preschools where, on graduation day, even the most hopeless child is given a prize for not actually maiming his classmates.”
Digging into the 2012 IMPAC Longlist
The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has unveiled its massive 2012 longlist. Recall that libraries around the world can nominate books for the prize, and these nominations, taken together, comprise the longlist. This year there are 147 novels on the list, nominated by 122 libraries in 45 countries. All of the books must have been published in English in 2010 (including translations).
Because of the award’s global reach and egalitarian process, it’s always interesting to dig deeper into the longlist. Taken as a whole, the literary proclivities of various countries become evident, and a few titles recur again and again, revealing which books have made a global impact on readers.
Overall favorites: books that were nominated by at least seven libraries.
Room by Emma Donoghue (20 libraries representing Australia, England, France, Ireland, the Maldives, New Zealand, and the United States)
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell (13 libraries representing Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States)
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen (12 libraries representing Canada, England, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and the United States)
To the End of the Land by David Grossman (10 libraries representing Brazil, Canada, Germany, and the United States)
Purge by Sofi Oksanen (8 libraries representing Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Norway, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland)
Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (7 libraries representing the Czech Republic, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United States)
You can also look at the list and see which books are favorites in different countries. Several books were nominated by multiple libraries in the same country. Here’s a few:
In Canada, Annabel by Kathleen Winter
In Germany, Fame by Daniel Kehlmann
In Ireland, Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
In the Netherlands, Counterpoint by Anna Enquist and The Book Club by Marjolijn Februari
There were also several countries with only one library nominating just one or two books. Here are a few of those:
From Bermuda, Gorée: Point of Departure by Angela Barry
From Cyprus, A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible by Christy Lefteri
From Hungary, One Amazing Thing by Chitra Divakaruni
From India, Serious Men by Manu Joseph
From Japan, The Book of Heroes by Miyuki Miyabe