‘Celestial Bodies’ Wins the Man Booker International Prize

The annual MacArthur “Genius” Fellows have been named. This award gives people from diverse fields $500,000 with “no strings attached,” for “exceptional creativity, as demonstrated through a track record of significant achievement, and manifest promise for important future advances.” There are typically a handful of literary types among the scientists, artists, and musicians who become Fellows. This year, by my count, there are three.Stuart Dybek, as a highly regarded short story writer and novelist, is the best-known among them. When most people think of Dybek, they think of Chicago, where much of his writing is set. He’s also the writer in residence at nearby Northwestern University. I haven’t read any Dybek, but when I do, I’ll likely start with The Coast of Chicago or I Sailed with Magellan.Peter Cole is co-founder and co-editor of Ibis Editions, “a small press and non-profit organization founded in Jerusalem in 1998 and dedicated to the publication of Levant-related books of poetry and belletristic prose. The press publishes translations from Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, French, and the other languages of the region. New writing is published, though special attention is paid to overlooked works from the recent and distant past.” Among Cole’s more recent efforts is The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492Lynn Nottage is a Brooklyn-based playwright. According to the Hartford Courant, “Nottage is developing a workshop production at Chicago’s Goodman Theater of ‘Ruined,’ set in a mining town in the Congo rainforest. She recently workshopped another new play for the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York, an adaptation of slave narratives for the stage. She is also working on a children’s musical ‘Sweet Billy and the Zulus’ for the Philadelphia-based touring company, Colored Girl Productions.” Her most recently published plays are Intimate Apparel and Fabulation.

Sometimes it seems like all there is to write about is book awards. The National Book Awards are handed out, but wait, here are the Whitbread finalists. The Whitbread, Britain’s second most prestigious prize after the Booker, is, it seems to me, at a disadvantage. Since the Whitbread comes out only a couple of months after the Booker, the selections are compared in the press. If the Whitbread too closely mirrors the Booker, it loses some of its punch, but if the judges pick a shortlist with no overlap with the Booker, the Whitbread is criticized for being too obscure. This year, the only overlap with the Booker is that they have both shortlisted Ali Smith’s The Accidental. As was much remarked when the Booker list was announced, many well-known authors have books out this year: Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith and Julian Barnes, among others. None of those made the Whitbread list, a fact that seems likely to have prompted head judge Philippa Gregory’s defensive sounding remark in the Guardian: “Our shortlist may confuse the book trade. We are not saying these are the only good books. They are books which happened to resonate powerfully with the judges of the moment.” The list does include two notable names: Salman Rushdie for Shalimar the Clown and Nick Hornby for A Long Way Down. Rounding out the fiction list is Cotton by Christopher Wilson (which, since it is going by a different title in England, has been much misrepresented in the press, as the Literary Saloon points out.) For the finalists in all the categories, visit the Whitbread site.

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has unveiled its massive 2010 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 156 novels on the list, nominated by 163 libraries in 43 countries. All of the books must have been published in English in 2008 (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 six libraries.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga (9 libraries representing Belgium, Canada, England, Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, and the United States)

A Mercy by Toni Morrison (8 libraries representing Barbados, Lebanon, Portugal, Switzerland, and the United States)

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (8 libraries representing Belgium, Canada, England, and Finland)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (8 libraries representing Brazil, Canada, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, and the United States)

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (8 libraries representing the Czech Republic, England, Ireland, South Africa, and the United States)

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill (7 libraries representing Austria, Ireland, South Africa, and the United States)

Breath by Tim Winton (6 libraries representing Australia, Germany, New Zealand, and the United States)

Indignation by Philip Roth (6 libraries representing Belgium, Germany, Spain, and the United States)

The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon (6 libraries representing Croatia, Greece, Ireland, Italy, and the United States)

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher (6 libraries representing Australia, England, Greece, New Zealand, and the United States)

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski (6 libraries representing 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 the Netherlands, The Jewish Messiah by Arnon Grunberg and The Twin by Gerbrand Bakker

In Canada, Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden and The Great Karoo by Fred Stenson

In New Zealand, Novel About My Wife by Emily Perkins

There were also several countries with only one library nominating just one or two books. Here are a few of those:

From Jamaica, The Same Earth by Kei Miller
From Romania, The Outcast by Sadie Jones
From Columbia, The Armies by Evelio Rosero
From Denmark, Machine by Peter Adolphsen
From Iceland, Arctic Chill by Arnaldur Indridason