Newsletter: March 2009

First to prizes. Naomi Klein was announced as the winner of the first £50,000 Warwick Prize for Writing last month. Organised by the University of Warwick, the prize is an international cross-disciplinary biennial award open to any genre or form of writing. Canadian journalist Klein’s winning book The Shock Doctrine was chosen from a diverse shortlist of six international titles. This year’s prize theme of ‘Complexity’ was interpreted differently by each writer, all experts in their genres, and ranged from music criticism and scientific theory to Spanish fiction.

Somewhat less complex, but no less impressive I'm sure, is Julia Gregson's novel East of the Sun, a book set in India during the last days of the Raj, which has been named 2009 Romantic Novel of the Year.

US author James Patterson - almost as famous for the quantity of his output as for its quality - was revealed as the most borrowed writer in UK libraries for the second year running. The most popular title, however, is JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

It's also been a prizewinning year for literature at the Oscars, with several movie adaptations of novels and short stories being shortlisted and winning prizes. But not everyone is happy about it. In a lecture at Emory Unversity in the United States, novelist Salman Rushdie has criticised the unlikely plot of Slumdog Millionnaire ('piles impossibility on impossibility'), the adaptation of The Reader ('a leaden, lifeless movie killed by respectability') and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ('doesn't finally have anything to say').

Now, in other news, if it's true that all publicity is good publicity, then the organisers of the inaugural Emirates Airlines Dubai literature festival must be laughing. First, as we reported on EnCompass recently, Margaret Atwood pulled out of the festival over concerns that another writer due to appear had been censored by programmers. Next, in an apparent bid to demonstrate their free speech credentials, the festival hastily convened a debate with International Pen. But then it seemed all may not be as it first appeared. Writing in The Guardian, Atwood worried that she'd got her wires crossed and acted somewhat hastily. 'What do I do now?' she said. 'Having leapt into this dog's breakfast, I have it all over my face'. The Canadian writer is now set to take part in the Pen debate via videolink.

The Bookseller reported that the last year was a hard one for independent bookshops in the UK, with more than one shop closing each week. 'There are 17 fewer independents trading this year compared to last, with 83 stores closing and 66 opening throughout the year. This is the biggest decline in numbers since 2006 when almost 100 shops closed', the journal said.

Small wonder then that several UK independent bookshops were said to be considering boycotting Sunnyside, the new novel from Glen David Gold, when it was revealed that its publishers, Sceptre, had struck a deal with high street retailer Waterstone's to exclusively sell the hardback version...

However, there was some good news for the publishing industry. Despite some fears that the credit crunch would mean more restrained publishing policies, data has revealed that the number of new books published in the UK increased last year by 4%. Publishers brought out 120,947 new books in 2008, up by 4% on their 2007 output.

One publisher who has recently been showing their capacity for inventive publicity if nothing else, is romance giant Mills & Boon. They reacted swiftly to a recent ban on kissing at a UK rail station, when their Publishing Director Sarah Ritherdon wrote to train operator Virgin to persuade them that 'lovers should be free to express their feelings whenever the mood takes them'. The publisher also set up a Facebook group for others to share romantic station moments...

Susan Tranter

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