Newsletter: July 2008

If you've fallen behind with what's happening in the UK literary world lately, then never fear. Here's a quick round-up...

First-time novelist Rawi Hage (pictured below, third from left) has won this year's IMPAC Dublin award - the world's richest literary prize - for his book De Niro's Game. As well as beating off competition from the likes of Philip Roth and Margaret Atwood, Hage's victory is even more impressive given that he wrote the book in his third language, English. It's set during the 1980s civil war in Lebanon, drawing on the author's own experiences as a child in Beirut.

 
Photo: IMPAC Dublin Award

Rose Tremain won this year's £30,000 Orange Prize for her novel The Road Home, the story of an immigrant from eastern Europe who arrives in Britain. Though she's been shortlisted for many of the top prizes, this is the first one she's won. No wonder she's pictured below looking at her trophy in disbelief.

 
Photo: Dan Kitson / Getty

Just setting out on her road to stardom, Nikita Lalwani has won the inagural Desmond Elliott Prize for her novel Gifted. She promptly 'gifted' (ahem) the £10,000 prize money to civil liberties campaigning organisation Liberty. The prize is a new biennial award for debut novels published in the UK, named after an agent and publisher who had a big impact, and who was by all accounts quite a character. I just had to include this picture of him exercising in his kitchen on a trapeze. Is that aspecial thing all publishers do?

Every year the Society of Authors gets together and gives out some prizes. This year, the winners were:

The Elizabeth Longford Prize: Rosemary Hill for God’s Architect – Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain

The Cholmondeley Awards: John Burnside, John Greening, David Harsent and Sarah Maguire

The Eric Gregory Awards:  Emily Berry, Rhiannon Hooson, James Midgley, Adam O’Riordan and Heather Phillipson

The Olive Cook Award: Alison MacLeod for 'Dirty Weekend', taken from Fifteen Tales of Attraction

The Somerset Maugham Awards: Gwendoline Riley for Joshua Spassky, Steven Hall for The Raw Shark Texts, Nick Laird for On Purpose and Adam Thirlwell for Miss Herbert

The Travelling Scholarships: Marina Lewycka, Ruth Padel and Colin Thubron

The McKitterick Prize: Jennie Walker for 24 for 3 

The Betty Trask Prize and Awards: David Szalay for London and the South-East, Ross Raisin for God’s Own Country, Thomas Leveritt for The Exchange Rate Between Love and Money and Anna Ralph for The Floating Island.

And last but definitely not least, writer and activist Mark Lynas's book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet picked up the £10,000 Royal Society science book of the year prize. Well done him.

Susan Tranter

Back to main page