Darkmans Double

Here's the shortlist for the Ondaatje Prize awarded by the Royal Society of Literature to a work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry which is "of the highest literary merit", and judged to convey a sense of place :

Darkmans by Nicola Barker
Paradise with Serpents by Robert Carver
The Whisperers by Orlando Figes
On Brick Lane by Rachel Lichtenstein
Sea Holly by Robert Minhinnick
The Discovery of France by Graham Rob

The only novels on the list are Darkmans (which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize), and Sea Holly, the first novel by Welsh poet Robert Minhinnick. More on all the titles on the Guardian website.

The winner will be announced on 28 April.

The Spirit of the Short Story, The Spirit of the Place

It seems to be high season in the realm of the literary awards in the UK and this blogger can hardly keep up!

The finalists for the National Short Story Prize were announced on Friday and include Hanif Kureishi, Julian Gogh, Jackie Kay, Jonathan Falla and David Almond.The award aims to raise the profile of this rather neglected form (in Britain at least). As chair of the judges, Mark Lawson, says: This prize exists partly because many - perhaps even most - publishers and literary editors still regard the novel as the most important form of story-telling and are suspicious of short stories. ... But this year's selection makes very clear that there is no connection at all between word-count and the scale of subject matter or characterisation that can be achieved. You can find out more about the prize (which will be awarded on 23rd April) and read what some of these writers think about the short story on the Story Story website. There are also short stories by leading writers for you to download for free as well as plenty of information about writing the short story.

Also announced was the shortlist for one of the most interesting awards of the year, the Ondaatje Prize (founded by Christopher Ondaatje and awarded by the Royal Society of Literature to the book, in any genre, which best invokes the spirit of a place).
Coleridge biographer Richard Holmes describes what the judges were looking for:

It is much more than a mere physical description of a landscape or cityscape. It is more than an exotic landscape or local colour. ... It is a particular kind of rootedness that may exist in geography, history, memory, or in particular people. We have looked for books that take us on some kind of journey, and favoured those that have that indefinable quality; an accumulated atmosphere; a power to haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.

The selected books include memoir, a novel, biography and exploration of ideas:
Anne Applebaum - Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps
Jonathan Bate - John Clare
Susan Elderkin - The Voices
Robert Macfarlane- Mountains of the Mind: A History of Fascination
Bryan Magee - Clouds of Glory: A Hoxton Childhood
Louisa Waugh - Hearing Birds Fly: A Year in a Mongolian Village
The prize will be presented on 18 May.
More award news to come!

Literary Act of Love

I think I've said it before, I was not aware of just how many literary prizes there are out there before I began this blog. And now here's another one - the Ondaatje Prize.

Named for Michael Ondaatje, the author of The English Patient?

I mean, how many Ondaatje's have you heard of? (I guess that if you're Sri Lankan, your answer would be different to mine.)

Actually, the prize is named after Christopher Ondaatje a British millionaire philanthropist. Oh yes, and Michael's brother. Good for him supporting literature. Though he apparently made his money in publishing, so I guess it's fitting.

I vow, and you guys can be my witness, that if I ever find myself with a fortune to bequeath, I'll set up a literary prize with it. (Though the bulk would have to go to my cats to keep them in the luxury they are accustomed to.)

Back to the £10,000 prize though, now in it's third year. Awarded annually "to a book of the highest literary merit, fiction, non-fiction or poetry, best evoking the spirit of a place", this year's winner is James Meek's The People's Act of Love, a novel set in Siberia in 1919, (during the Russian Civil War). The novel concerns a renegade Czech army unit stranded in a community dominated by an obscure religious sect. You may remember that it was also longlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize.

Check out the rest of the shortlist here.