Newsletter: January 2008

Greetings and Happy New Year from everyone at EnCompass. If you're suffering from the Christmas flu or the back-to-work blues, then we're here to give you a friendly injection of literary energy. Here's a quick round-up of what's been happening in the UK book world...

Christmas is traditionally a busy time for booksellers everywhere, and a late surge in December seems to have helped both the high street and independent retailers. Topping the bestseller charts for 2007 were, unsurprisingly, the two versions of J.K. Rowling's latest Potter blockbuster. Following them were Jed Rubenfeld's The Interpretation of Murder and Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper's Daughter, both books featured on the highly influential Richard & Judy Book Club programme. When it came to the inevitable battle of the cookbooks, Nigella Lawson beat Jamie Oliver into the top ten.

Several writers were listed among the New Year's Honours announced just after Christmas. Children's writer Jacqueline Wilson, the most-borrowed writer in the UK and already holder of an OBE, becomes a Dame, and Hanif Kureishi, author of The Buddha of Suburbia, My Beautiful Laundrette and many other books and plays, receives a CBE. Eric Hill, creator of Spot the dog, becomes an OBE.

 Jacqueline Wilson (photo: Random House_

On the prize front, Sarah Hall's third novel, The Carhullan Army, picked up the 2007 John Llewellyn Rhys Award, which recognises the best work by writers under 35. The book is set in a futuristic but not too distant UK, where things are run by a regime known only as The Authority. From the confines of her Lancaster prison cell, Sister tells of her search for a quasi-mythical commune of 'unofficial' women rumoured to be living in a remote part of Cumbria. You can read our EnCompass interview with Sarah Hall here.

 Sarah Hall (photo: Sarah Hall)

Meanwhile Dinaw Mengestu's Children of the Revolution won the Guardian First Book Award, a prize notable for being open to writers across genres. According to The Guardian the book 'tells the story of Sepha Stephanos, a man who fled to America to escape the violence of Ethiopia's communist revolution after witnessing his father's death at the hands of junta soldiers. Seventeen years later, running a struggling convenience store in a once grand but now dilapidated neighbourhood of Washington DC, Stephanos is still trying to find his place in the new world.'

 Dinaw Mengestu (photo: Linda Nylind)

There's plenty to look forward to in 2008. The overall winner of the Costa Book Award will shortly be announced, as will the winner of poetry's prestigious T.S. Eliot Prize. Stay tuned to EnCompass to hear who wins...

Susan Tranter

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