James McBride has won the prestigious National Book Foundation National Book Award for fiction with his novel The Good Lord Bird which is set during John Brown’s abolitionist campaign, a pivotal period of American history. The citation says : McBride retells the story in a voice as comic and original as…
Crace bookie’s choice for Booker Prize winner
Jim Crace’s Harvest has firmed as Bookie’s favourite to take the Booker Prize announced later today and having now completed all six finalists I’m placing my $5 on him as well. If I was going for a Trifecta ( if indeed I was completely sure what a Trifecta actually was) I’d…
Jhumpa Lahiri and Thomas Pynchon on the National Book Awards fiction longlist
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri which is on the Booker Prize shortlist, Bleeding Edge, Thomas Pynchon’s new book which has garnered some ecstatic reviews and George Saunders piercing collection of short stories, Tenth of December, are among the ten books on the longlist for the National Book Awards Fiction Prize.…
Review: The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Jhumpa Lahiri made a stunning entry on the international literary scene. Her debut book of short-stories, Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2000 and her 2003 novel The Namesake, was adapted into a film. Her follow-up book of short stories Unaccustomed Earth, released in 2008, shot straight to the New York Times Best Seller list. Now her latest book, The Lowland, has been included on the 2013 Man Booker shortlist released last week. Not a bad pedigree.
The Lowland is about Subhash and Udayan two Bengali brothers growing up in post-World War 2 Calcutta. Udayan is the intrepid one, the brave one “blind to self-constraints, like an animal incapable of perceiving certain colours.” Sabhash was the cautious one. The one who “waited for chaotic games to end, for shouts to subside”, whose favourite moments were “when he was alone, or felt alone.’’
Although the character of each slightly baffled the other, they grow up more like twins, virtually inseparable. Both curious and academic, their idea of excitement is to create a small radio from spare parts, their private portal to the cataclysmic events unfolding around them through the 1960s and 1970s. Then, at University, while Subhash is devoted only to his studies physically frightened of the brutality that is unfolding across the city, Udayan becomes an active participant in the Naxalite movement, the Maoist-based
Booker Prize short list announced
Harvest, by early favourite Jim Crace tops the shortlist for the Booker Prize announced overnight in London. Also on the list are A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki, We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri and The Testament…
Booker Prize 2013 longlist announced
Women have dominated the Booker Prize long list taking out seven of the 13 slots. In an eclectic selection said by the judges to be the most diverse ever there was only a smattering of well-known authors. There was a fair international spread with four British authors, three Irish and representatives from Malaysia, Zimbabwe, New Zealand, India and Canada. The full long list is: