Newsletter: November 2006

I was talking the other day in my blog about how it sometimes feels as if all our book news is filtered through who's won what  prize, and I'm afraid October one of the months where that is definitely the case. Here's a quick prize-tastic round-up from the last few weeks...

First off, the poets. Robin Robertson won this year's Forward Prize for his collection, Swithering. Robertson took the £10,000 prize after triumphing over an impressive shortlist (which included Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney). The £5,000 best first collection prize was won by Tishani Doshi for Countries of the Body, while Sean O'Brien won the £1,000 prize for best single poem for 'Fantasia on a Theme of James Wright'.

Next up, the novelists. October is Man Booker month, so the UK book world had, as usual, got itself into a mild frenzy about the likely winner. Bookies favourite Sarah Waters was hotly tipped. But Kiran Desai beat both the bookies and the favourites to win the prize for her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss. The Indian-born novelist won £50,000. At 35 Desai is the youngest woman to win the award, which eluded her mother, the three time shortlisted author Anita Desai.

October was also the month when the Nobel prizes were announced. This year it was the turn of Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, best known for his books Snow and My Name is Red, to be recognised with the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature. Horace Engdahl, the secretary of the Swedish academy, said Pamuk was 'an author that creates an immediate and almost childish joy of reading. He has stolen the novel, one can say, from us westerners and has transformed it to something different from what we have ever seen before ... His roots in two cultures ... allows him to take our own image and reflect it in a partially unknown and partially recognisable image, and it is incredibly fascinating.' Pamuk's win, however, has divided his country, where he faced criminal charges during the last year for 'belittling Turkishness'. 

And last but by no means least, children's writing. The Carnegie Medal has long been associated with the best in children's writing. Its winners make an impressive literary roll call, and include Arthur Ransome, the first recipient, Terry Pratchett, Melvin Burgess, Anne Fine and this year's winner, Mal Peet (you can read our recent on-line chat with Mal here). The organisers are now asking the public to vote for their favourite winner, as part of the award's 70th anniversary celebrations. You might still be able to register your vote by visiting the Carnegie website... if you're quick.

Phew. All those prizes. All that acclaim. Now that the champagne corks have stopped popping, and the TV cameras stopped rolling, the publishers can get down to the serious work of plugging their prize-winning authors in time for the Christmas book-buying rush. With a new nip in the air here in the UK, it's that time of year when thoughts turn to cosying up on the sofa with... what else but a good book?

Susan Tranter

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