Newsletter: August 2008

Here in the UK publishers and authors of children's books have been debating whether or not they should put age ranges on the back of their books. Those in favour say it'll make it easier for children (and parents) to buy books whih match their reading ages, but those against (including 77% of the membership of the Society of Authors, according to a recent survey) say it'll be restrictive and unhelpful. Either way, 95% of reprints and new books are due to start carrying age guide logos from this autumn.

Poet Laureate Andrew Motion (below) has been appointed Chair of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, charged with, among other things, 'promoting the culture sector to Olympic spectators and visitors in 2012'. Motion has been quick to reveal that he'll be concentrating on libraries, mentioning in particular that 'one of my priorities is to make libraries feel like they are part of the community. They need to find an acceptance among those parts of the community we don't see in the library.'

 Photo: Faber & Faber

It's also been another busy month for prize-givers and shortlisting panels. Henrietta Rose-Innes from South Africa has won this year's Caine Prize with her story 'Poison'. The £10,000 prize rewards the best short story written in English by an African writer.

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children was named 'Best of the Booker', in a special celebratory prize. Readers around the world were invited to nominate their favourite from a shortlist of six previous Booker Prize winners, and Midnight's Children - which also won the 'Booker of Bookers' in 1993 - took 36% of the vote.

Kate Summerscale (below) won the £30,000 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction with The Suspicions of Mr Whicher. The book is described as 'a pacy analysis of a murder case in a Wiltshire country house in 1860 which inspired detective genre writers including Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins'.

The longlist for this year's Man Booker Prize has also been announced, amid the usual noises of controversy and mutters about who's been left out. The titles in contention are:

Aravind Adiga, The White Tiger              
Gaynor Arnold, Girl in a Blue Dress                     
Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture                 
John Berger, From A to X                                
Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog                       
Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies                            
Linda Grant, The Clothes on Their Backs           
Mohammed Hanif, A Case of Exploding Mangoes       
Philip Hensher, The Northern Clemency                  
Joseph O'Neill, Netherland                              
Salman Rushdie, The Enchantress of Florence         
Tom Rob Smith, Child 44                        
Steve Toltz, A Fraction of the Whole.

We'll have to wait until October for the eventual winner to be announced.

Susan Tranter

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