Arthur and George - Julian BarnesRemember - this is the prize awarded to books nominated by libraries around the world. The National Library of Malaysia nominated Tash Aw's Harmony Silk Factory, but it didn't make it beyond the longlist.
A Long Long Way - Sebastian Barry
Slow Man - J.M. Coetzee
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
The Short Day Dying - Peter Hobbs
No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson
Shalimar the Clown - Salman Rushdie
This seems to be a safe and solid list with no real surprises. The titles are familiar - many of these books have already won or been nominated for other literary prizes. All except Per Patterson's book were first published in the UK or the US and were written in English (and his book, you will remember, won the Independent Foreign fiction award last year.) And there is not a single female author on the list this year!
It might have been nice to have had a few surprises, some great novels from out there which would otherwise have slipped beneath out radar.
6 comments:
IMPAC lacking impact? :-)
amazing! so many of the titles in the long list and most in the short list were available in the recent bigbookshop clearance sales ...
I'm now reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I bought it at the Big Bookshop sale. It caught my eye as it had photos - which were part of the story, and a number of pages which had only one word, like .... "Hello". How refreshing. How different. And the POV of people who aren't quite ... normal. May it be the second book I finish reading this year.
The first book, I finished today. Sweetness of the Belly. Ohmigod - it is absolutely beautiful. I couldn't bear it to end. I want to read it again, slowly. Now I want to devour all her other novels.
sympozium - i used the pun last time and didn't think i could get away with it again
greenbottle - yes indeed. one way or another i've acquired most of this list ... the only one that's been a little harder to find here was per petterson's
animah - i also bought "extremely loud and incredibly close" at the warehouse sale - a v. nice hardback, and look forward to reading it soon
IMPAC has no impact without tea?
animah - you've outpunned sympozium!
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