Newsletter: May 2008

I know that there's more to life - even literary life - than book awards, but over this last month there have been so many anouncements of longlists, shortlists and winners that I can't ignore them here. It's actually made me realise just how many and various are the awards on offer for writers of all genres, genders, nations and ages. Sometimes it's hard keeping up. Anyway, by way of a quick reminder of what's currently hot on the prize front, but in no particular order, here we go...

The 2008 Ondaatje Prize an annual award of £10,000 for a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which evokes the spirit of a place, has been won by Graham Robb (pictured below with Christopher Ondaatje) for his book The Discovery of France. 

 Photo: The Guardian

Raja Shehadeh’s book, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape has won the Orwell Prize for political writing. Johann Hari of The Independent won the Orwell Prize for Journalism, while Clive James was presented with a Special Award for Writing and Broadcasting.

And the inaugural International Prize for Arabic Fiction has been won by Egyptian novelist Baha Taher with Sunset Oasis. The $50,000 prize, styling itself the 'Arabic Booker', was launched last year and considered 131 titles from some 18 countries.

Turning to shortlists now. The books still in the running for the latest James Tait Black Memorial Prizes have been announced. On the fiction shortlist are: Our Horses in Egypt by Rosalind Belben, The Devil's Footprints by John Burnside (below), The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, A Far Country by Daniel Mason, and Salvage by Gee Williams. While still battling it out for the biography prize are: Hand Me My Travelin' Shoes: In Search of Blind Willie McTell by Michael Gray, God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill, Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee, Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore, and John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand by Richard Reeves.

 Photo: Niall McDiarmid

The shortlisted titles for this year's prestigious Carnegie Medal for children's writing have also been revealed. In contention are: Gatty's Tale by Kevin Crossley-Holland, Ruby Red by Linzi Glass, Crusade by Elizabeth Laird, Apache by Tanya Landman, Here Lies Arthur by Philip Reeve, What I Was by Meg Rosoff (below), and Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine. The winner will be announced in June.

 Photo: megrosoff.co.uk

Not one but two shortlists from the Orange Prize people. Linign up for the Orange Prize for Fiction are Fault Lines by Nancy Huston, The Outcast by Sadie Jones, When We Were Bad by Charlotte Mendelson, Lullabies for Little Criminals by Heather O’Neill, The Road Home by Rose Tremain and Lottery by Patricia Wood. Meanwhile the three books shortlisted for the Orange New Writers Prize are The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff, Inglorious by Joanna Kavenna, and The Voluptuous Delights of Peanut Butter and Jam by Lauren Liebenberg. The winners of both awards will also be announced in June.

And finally, just in case you were struggling to distinguish between this welter of different awards and prizes, you can't mistake 'the one where you win a pig'. Well, almost. With the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic writing, the eventual winner is celebrated by, according to The Guardian, 'not only considerable quantities of Bollinger's finest and most bubbly, but also [...] a Gloucester Old Spot pig being named after the winning book, in honour of the legendary Empress of Blandings, beloved of PG Wodehouse's fictional hero Clarence Emsworth'. This year's shortlist features The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett, Pontoon by Garrison Keillor, The Butt by Will Self (below), Submarine by Joe Dunthrone, Jude: Level 1 by Julian Gough, and Sunday at the Cross Bones by John Walsh. The pig in question is to be guest of honour at the prizegiving at this year's Hay Festival.

 Photo: Penguin

There. Consider yourself fully briefed.

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