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Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist 2014

Baileys logoOverjoyed to see the Baileys (nee Orange) Women’s Prize for Fiction come out early this morning and to recognise a few books that I have actually read and really enjoyed. And even more pleasure in the fact that there is now a list from which I am sure to find more that I might not have been aware of, to add to the ever-growing list.

It may be a women’s prize, but it celebrates diversity across generations, genres, countries and cultures, something that blogging has certainly encouraged as the recommendations and access to what is available out there is no longer limited by geographic borders and what’s on display in bookshops.

BaileysThe 20 titles are selected for excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women (in English) from throughout the world.

The judges had this to say:

“The judges feel that this is a fantastic selection of books of the highest quality – intensely readable, gripping, intelligent and surprising – that you would want to press on your friends, and the judges have been doing just that,” commented Helen Fraser, Chair of Judges. “There was a great deal of talent and exciting writing in the books that were submitted this year and we hope that between now and the announcement of the shortlist on 7th April many readers will want to share the enjoyment we have had with these 20 terrific novels.”

And the longlisted titles are:

Baileys1Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Americanah –  Nigerian – My review here 

Margaret Atwood – Maddaddam – Canadian

Suzanne Berne – The Dogs of Littlefield – American

Fatima Bhutto – The Shadow of the Crescent Moon – Pakistani – My review here

Claire Cameron – The Bear – Canadian

Lea Carpenter – Eleven Days – American

M.J. Carter – The Strangler Vine – British – 1st Novel

Baileys2Eleanor Catton – The Luminaries  – New Zealand/Canadian – my review here

Deborah Kay Davies – Reasons She Goes to the Woods – British

Elizabeth Gilbert – The Signature of All Things – American – my review here 

Hannah Kent – Burial Rites – Australian

Rachel Kushner – The Flamethrowers  – American

Jhumpa Lahiri – The Lowland – Indian/American

Baileys3

Audrey Magee – The Undertaking  – Irish

Eimear McBride – A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing – Irish

Charlotte Mendelson – Almost English – British

Anna Quindlen – Still Life With Bread Crumbs – American

Elizabeth Strout – The Burgess Boys – American – my review here

Donna Tartt – The Goldfinch  – American

Evie Wyld – All the Birds, Singing  – British – my review here

So, one month to read a few more from the list – I will definitely be reading Evie Wyld, I have The Goldfinch, but that’s my summer chunkster, so I’m saving that for August, I’d like to read Hannah Kent’s novel Burial Rites set in Iceland and based on a true story, I have mentioned that numerous times to people and not got around to reading it myself yet. I am curious about The Flamethrowers and Fatima Bhutto’s book sounds interesting.

So what titles are you considering?

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Man Booker Prize Longlist 2013

Man Booker 2013 logoToday judges announced the Man Booker Dozen that have made it onto the long list for 2013. Last year Hilary Mantel won it for the second time and with a sequel, Bring Up the Bodies, which is the 2nd book in the Thomas Cromwell trilogy.

StetI have just finished reading Diana Athill’s excellent book Stet, An Editor’s Life arguably the person with the longest active memory of the history of books and publishing today, she won the Costa Prize for her most recent memoir Somewhere Near the End in 2009, when she was 93 years old. Stet, she wrote at the sprightly age of 80 shortly after retiring.

In the book she mentions the launch of the Booker Prize, mentioning that in the sixties, it was becoming more and more costly and less profitable to publish books and to compete against the bigger publishing houses. It was becoming difficult to sustain a publishing house that appealed to the more literary reader. She describes the two kinds of reader that existed, still relevant today:

People who buy books, not counting useful how-to-do-it books are of two kinds. There are those who buy because they love books and what they can get from them, and those to whom books are one form of entertainment among several. The first group, which is by far the smaller, will go on reading, if not for ever, then for as long as one can forsee. The second group has to be courted. It is the second which makes the best-seller, impelled thereto by the buzz that a particular book is really something special; and it also makes publishers’ headaches, because it has become more and more resistant to courting.

The Booker Prize was instigated in 1969 with the second group in mind: make the quality of a book news by awarding it an impressive amount of money, and hoi polloi will prick up their ears.

WBN 2013It worked for the books named, but the underlying aim to convert more people to reading did not. Not much has changed. The latest attempt to convert the population into reader, we could say is World Book Night, where publishers print thousands of books for free and they are given out on one night in the year, to people who don’t really read. Has that worked? Unlikely I think.

But onto the prize for 2013, this year’s long listed titles and authors are:

Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries

Jim Crace, Harvest

Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

ColmTóibín, The Testament of Mary

Colum McCann, TransAtlantic – my review here

Donal Ryan, The Spinning Heart – my review here

NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names – my review here

Tash Aw, Five Star Billionaire

Richard House, The Kills

Alison MacLeod, Unexploded

Charlotte Mendelson, Almost English

Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman

Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

Congratulations to all those authors and good luck to anyone hoping to read the list, I’ve only read one and I do have The Spinning Heart, so I guess that will next.

The shortlist will be announced on 11 September and the winner on 16 October.

Time to get reading!

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Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist & Pulitzer Prize 2013

Womens prize logoThe long-list becomes the short-list and it looks like a strong line-up for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013. Here is the short list:

Kate Atkinson Life After Life – my review here

A M Homes May We Be Forgiven

Barbara Kingsolver Flight Behaviour

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Maria Semple Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Zadie Smith NW – my review here

Flight Behaviour (2) NW life after life

Here’s what Miranda Johnson, Chair of the Judges had to say:

‘The task of reducing the list of submissions from over 140 to just 20 books was always going to be daunting, but this year’s infinite variety has made the task even trickier. The list we have ended up with is, we believe, truly representative of that diversity of style, content and provenance, and contains those works which genuinely inspired the most excitement and passion amongst the judges. I don’t anticipate the job becoming easier at the next stage!’

I have managed to read two that made it through, plus others from the long list including Honour, Ignorance and The Light Between Oceans. I am currently slow-reading Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour, she won the prize in 2010 with The Lacuna, one of the first books I reviewed here. Zadie Smith is also a previous winner, her book On Beauty won in 2006.

I was sure that Atkinson and Smith would make the list, not only because the stories are engaging, but because they dare to step outside the ordinary and test the boundaries of convention, Life After Life likely to be a more popular read, but both deserving their place here.

I know many will be surprised yet delighted to see Maria Semple’s Where’s You Go Bernadette on the list and of course the inevitable Hilary Mantel, no surprise there. Will anyone be able to knock her off her current perch I wonder?

The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, London on 5 June.

The Guardian – Women’s prize for fiction reveals ‘staggeringly strong’ shortlist

Pulitzer Prizepulitzer

Amid the terrible news that saddened and horrified us all in Boston yesterday, a day that should have been cause for calm celebration, the annual Pulitzer Prizes for 2013 were quietly announced.

The Snow Child was one of the three finalists for the fiction prize, the winner was The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson, a timely journey in the heart of North Korea.

It was good to see a non-fiction title I enjoyed and recommended last year Tom Reiss’s Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo win the biography prize. My review here.

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Five Favourite Fiction Reads

I recall stumbling across Chalk the Sun and reading many of the posts, Julie had read many books I loved and many more that I aspired to read. The first review I read there was The Buddha in the Attic, the first time I had heard of both the book and its author Julie Otsuka. Since then, I have been an avid follower of Chalk the Sun. Not only is Julie a talented, observant, evocative writer and reader, she is working on her own book set in France, which many of us are waiting to read!

Photo0650Julie tagged me in the Five Favourite Reads challenge, a near impossible task, so I will share 5 favourites that come to mind spontaneously.

Kimberly, a Bostonian writer living in Rome, also nominated me in the Happy Booker Alternative Book Award and since she’s stretched the rules to choose outside the 2012-2013 year, I’m going to combine these two awards and exercise freedom in choosing.

Whenever I visit Kimberly’s blog, she’s either reading, visiting a European city (known to be inspired to write a short story as a result), winning prizes for those excellent short stories, or planning to go to the Women’s Fiction Festival in Matera, Italy. This is a blog to linger in and be inspired by.

Thanks also to writer Deborah Brasket of Living on the Edge of the World for nominating this blog for the Inspiring blog Award and to Red Headed Stitcher who has nominated me in the past for the Sisterhood of Bloggers award and more recently the Liebster Award. I’m not too good at participating in awards, but thank you to all those who passed them on to me, I appreciate every gesture.

First, five out of too many bloggers whose posts I look forward to reading, whose exchanges I appreciate and whose favourite books I’d love to know (no obligation though):

Five Great Blogs

ReadEng Didi’s Press – lives and works in the north of France, loves books and the English language, sound familiar?

Three Hundred Sixty Five – it’s an ambitious challenge guaranteed to improve your writing skills and Fransi is doing it, I’m reading it in awe.

JoV’s Book Pyramid – reading around the world, across genre, an eclectic collection of book gems to be found here.

PB Writes – poet, writer doing the NaMeSitDifStarDaiWri(expletive)Po check her out and be inspired, I was, I wrote 2 poems this week, first in 2 years!

Books Can Save a Life – thoughts on books and how they make us who we are, with an emphasis on the personally meaningful.

My Five Great Fiction Reads

010413_1256_TheIndustry1.jpgThe Industry of Souls, Martin Booth My first read on 2013 was a reread one of my all-time favourite books and one that has stayed with me over the years and stood the test of time. He wrote one other novel Islands of Silence which I also loved and a memoir which I have still to read, Gweilo: Memories Of A Hong Kong Childhood. Sadly, he died in 2004 just after finishing this memoir. My recent review here.

Astonishing GodsAstonishing the Gods, Ben Okri This was a real favourite from my twenties, when life was full of indecision and anything was possible. I love a good fable and this small volume was a surprise read after struggling through Okri’s more infamous, head spinning work The Famished Road.

Birds Without WingsBirds Without Wings, Louis de Bernières When this book was published Loius de Bernières had not published a book for 10 years, so it arrived amidst significant intrigue. He is something of a hit or miss author, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was a word of mouth sensation, even if was a struggle to get into, however this is his masterpiece. Birds without Wings is a book to read slowly and savour each word, each character, each facet of that tragic and bitter struggle between the Greeks and the Turks during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. Epic and profoundly humane.

HummingbirdHummingbird, James George In 2006, three New Zealand writer’s, Elisabeth Knox, James George and Vincent O’Sullivan visited Aix-en-Provence and I listened to them read. I had read Knox’s Vintner’s Luck, I knew of Vincent O’Sullivan’s work, but wasn’t familiar with James George. He read from his book Hummingbird and I was entranced. Just those few pages and I knew it was a book I had to read.

Three strangers arrive at a camping ground on a part of the barren, isolated Ninety Mile Beach. They are a former prostitute, a young man just released from prison, and a retired Cambridge don, former Battle of Britain pilot and veteran of the Battle of Crete. Slowly we learn their stories as the author examines their past, lost souls who find solace in this endless sea, sand and sky. It is an incredibly moving, lyrical work from a little known but exceptionally talented writer and poet.

all the pretty horsesAll the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy I picked this up in the library, not realising it was the first in The Border Trilogy, and what a thrill it was to discover that McCarthy, though bleak in his subject writes such pure, lyrical prose.

This coming of age novel and it’s sequel The Crossing are something of the best a book can offer someone like me, a great story, exceptional visual writing, inspiring awe. It’s like unlocking another door to that mystery of what makes us tick, it remains something of a mystery true, but I know that Cormac McCarthy’s way of expressing and describing in words is one of my keys.

So, what are the first books that spontaneously come to mind as your favourites?

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NW, life’s passage via the Kilburn High Road

The back cover of Zadie Smith’s novel NW, recently long-listed for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 mentions This Is The Story Of A City, the north-west corner of city, however that’s not how I think of it. London is something else, as is The City of London.

NW is a community, a fluid changing community, one of London’s many pulses; for some it is a stepping stone to the next stage, for others it is home. It has been a thoroughfare into London since the days of the Romans and in more recent times, the resting place for Irish immigrants fleeing their country for one reason or another, sometimes dramatic, sometimes not. And following the Irish are the many other groups who found NW their starting point to a life in London, that city of promise and unending challenge. NW is the same, the faces that pass through it, indicative of the era we are living within.

NWNW the novel is experimental, its structure changes with each section and after starting the second part which focuses on Felix, I realised that the narrative voice was being used as a metaphor for the state of mind of the character, a brave step or a risk on the authors part by commencing with Leah, who thoughts are all over the place and is suffering from that anxiety of a young, married woman with a successful career and a husband who loves her, who doesn’t understand why she is not content, or why she can’t admit that she isn’t ready to start a family.

So we start with the staccato stream of conscious thoughts of a woman who would benefit from therapy and/or meditation to still that rampant inner chatter, planting the reader in the midst of prose that is challenging for some and uneasy for those listening to the audio version. Not when chapter 7 is shaped like a tree, though that is one of the least challenging pages, one of beauty in fact.

But once we get to Felix’s section, things calm down, Felix’s major life troubles are behind him, the reading is easy and the pace picks up.  Although he’s not entirely immune to temptation, he seems to have moved on from his more despondent days, he’s been clean for 2 years and plans to stay that way. To me, he is the only character who shows real signs of moving on, however he has not moved out of NW,  his mistake perhaps is in staying and trying to convert those around him.

The other female character Keisha, changes her name to Natalie when she becomes a lawyer, an attempt to outgrow her past; she marries and has two children. She and Leah have been friends since their school days and their connection provides the one strong thread throughout the novel. Natalie, like Leah has risen above her past, but can’t seem to resist undermining it, with her strange behaviour, in what was for me, one of the least believable parts of the novel, in part because the author keeps us from knowing exactly what Natalie is up to online and offline, before she gets caught and flips out. I was hoping she might be more influenced by the role model of  Theodora Lewis-Lane, who tries to advise her.

“The first lesson is: turn yourself down. One notch. Two. Because this is not neutral.”  She passed a hand over her neat frame from her head to her lap, like a scanner. “This is never neutral.”

NW6For me personally, it was in part a nostalgic read, Zadie Smith’s writing comes alive when she evokes place and it is a neighbourhood I lived in and around for many years, NW is the most complete and yet complex character of all, embracing so much diversity, inviting everyone in without prejudice and yet claiming some in the harshest terms possible. There are as many reasons to hate it as there are to love it and anyone who has lived there will likely never forget it.

NW is a melancholic novel about four characters trying to escape their past and leaves the reader with few signs of hope for the future, or at least that future is left for us to imagine. Those who focus on the uniqueness of the writing or who have some experience of /interest in these communities may enjoy it, while those looking for the traditional transformation of character, or any kind of escape may be disappointed.

Despondency is the norm and we will not be rescued from it, it merely lessens with time if we survive.

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Not the Orange Women’s Prize for Fiction Longlist

Womens prize logoThere may not be a new sponsor yet, however 20 books appear on the long list for the international Women’s Prize for Fiction and although there are certain predictable inclusions, such as Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies, Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behaviour and Zadie Smith’s NW, it is great to see such a diverse range of excellent books.

life after lifeI have managed to read a few already, here are links to my reviews of Elif Shafak’s Honour, M.L.Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans and Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life. I enjoyed all three books, but won’t be trying to guess the winner, it’s much too subjective to choose, read the reviews and see what appeals to you. I am sure there is something for everyone.

There is an interesting article in The Guardian today with links to a synopsis and reviews for all of the books. They include reader reviews as well as journalist reviews. The Guardian Bookshop is an interesting alternative for buying new books in the UK, particularly as they don’t charge an additional delivery charge for every book.

The Women’s Prize for Fiction 2013 is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman. Any woman writing in English of any nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter is eligible. The shortlist will be announced on April 16. Happy Reading!

The Longlist of 20 novels

Womens-Prize-longlist

Kitty Aldridge A Trick I Learned From Dead Men

Kate Atkinson Life After LifeHonour

Ros Barber The Marlowe Papers

Shani Boianjiu The People of Forever are Not Afraid

Gillian Flynn Gone Girl

Sheila Heti How Should A Person Be?

A M Homes May We Be Forgiven

Barbara Kingsolver Flight Behaviour

Deborah Copaken Kogan The Red Book

Hilary Mantel Bring Up the Bodies

Bonnie Nadzam Lamb

Emily Perkins The Forrests122012_0454_TheLightBet1.jpg

Michèle Roberts Ignorance

Francesca Segal The Innocents

Maria Semple Where’d You Go, Bernadette

Elif Shafak Honour

Zadie Smith NW

M L Stedman The Light Between Oceans

Carrie Tiffany Mateship with Birds

G. Willow Wilson Alif the Unseen

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Christmas Draw

CIMG3620Yesterday we put our Christmas tree up and it looks different to other years, the children deciding against the multi-coloured, let’s use everything look and sticking to mainly silver and red, with the exception of the gold bird, because after all, what is Christmas without the reminder of wildlife and animals – at least that is my nine-year-old son’s view. Even Noisette, the cat seems to agree as he has found a new place to sleep, sniff and climb.

CIMG3615So while the hat was out, we put all your names in and drew out PB Rippey, from PB Writes, a copy of Paul Durcan’s Christmas Day is winging its way to your door and let’s hope it does indeed arrive in time for Christmas Day.

CIMG3618

Thank you everyone for participating, reading and commenting in the Christmas Bloghop and to Stephanie for organising it. I look forward to the same next year!

Joyeux Noël!

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Man Booker Prize Winner 2012

Tonight is the grand dinner in the Grand Hall of London’s Guildhall, where invited guests, judges and shortlisted nominees will be dining on porcini soufflé with a warm salad of wild mushrooms, black truffle shavings and cep velouté to start, then roast lamb with all the trimmings and a dessert of autumn textures and scents.

I do love how twitter lends a sense of occasion to an event I am far from, but can so vividly imagine thanks to our ever faithful, if somewhat distracted guests.

Drapers Livery Hall

It takes me back to a time-out year while studying in London and working part-time as a silver service waitress, serving many of the worshipful companies of vintners, weavers, apothecaries, blacksmiths, basketmakers, bowyers, broderers, feltmakers, farriers (ancient trade and craft brotherhoods fraternities), referred to collectively as livery companies, of which more than 100 continue to survive and meet inside some of the most extraordinary inner environments in the City of London today.

The Loving Cup

The livery companies are said to have originated in England before 1066. Guilds or associations were very popular throughout Europe and here in France, they remain prolific, although without all the pomp and ceremony that I was witness to during that year in London.

Ceremony of the Loving Cup

Rose petals in finger bowls and the loving cup ceremony, where two daggers are passed from man to man, while a third man (or woman) drinks in a protective ritual said to date back to Saxon times when King Edward was assassinated (stabbed in the back), place settings for multiple courses, at least 4 glasses for the water, wines and port and women smoking cigarettes in long-stemmed holders.

They had responsibility for standards, policy, educational qualifications, statutory and regulatory functions, and many of the guilds continue to play an important role in those areas today – however I was only witness to their meal time etiquette, which as a foreigner was a fascinating world to me, like living inside a medieval book for a night – surreal and the experience came with no explanation, only how to serve meat and vegetable using a fork and spoon in one hand, while holding a heavy plate with said food in the other. I developed very strong biceps and a unique cultural insight.

Today many of the City’s (London’s inner financial district) street names – such as Milk Street, Bread Street, Ironmonger Lane, Poultry, Cloth Fair and Mason’s Avenue – mark the sites where it all began.

And tonight book lovers and writers gather in that great medieval-style guildhall to celebrate literature and make one writer’s night, one never to forget.

Now that I’ve spent the last hour on a bit of a nostalgia trip, let’s check twitter again to see what we will be reading, will it be Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home, the one on the list I have read, or Tan Twan Eng’s The Garden of Evening Mists which I haven’t read, though I did just read his first novel The Gift of Rain.

………and the winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2012 is……..

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel!

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Swimming Home

Author, Deborah Levy

This is my first read from the Booker Prize shortlist, a book that fell into my hands during a recent visit to London. I have been aware of Deborah Levy’s work for some years, though outside the mainstream, so seeing it being nominated in the Booker list, it was one title I felt a definite connection to, there being only two degrees of separation between Deborah and I.

Hers is an interesting story in light of recent perceptions that much literary fiction is or has fallen out of favour now with pressure on publishers to go with titles that are likely to make significant if not mass profits. Her previous publishers neglected to take on this title because, as she said:

‘the fear among those who admired it was that Swimming Home was too literary to prosper in a tough economy … to be fair, there was quite a bit of agonising, but in the end Marketing and Sales won the argument.’

Titles published by ‘And Other Stories’

In my earlier post What is Really Harming Literature, I mention the commodification of literature, something the publisher of Levy’s latest book And Other Stories developed in response to. For a set fee, members subscribe to the publisher, kind of like a club and elect whether to receive two or all four of the titles they will publish during the year. You won’t know who the authors or the books are until published, except that they are international fiction, either in English or translated, and of the type the publisher believes is being ignored by mainstream corporations.

The selection of titles passes through an open consultative process which agents, interested members of the public, writers, friends, colleagues contribute to, so as a subscriber you are invited to contribute to the choice of future books to be published. The first copies are limited edition, so all subscribers receive not only a potentially excellent book, but something of a collector’s item as well.

Swimming Home for all that, I found a relatively easy, medium paced accessible read, with enough story to keep the reader intrigued, while delving into the various characters, two families staying in a French villa on holiday; Joe the home based poet, his war reporting and frequently absent wife Isabel, their teenage daughter Nina and their friends who own a struggling shop in Euston, Mitchell and Laura.

Their relative tranquillity is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of Kitty Finch, a young woman due to rent the villa a week later, whom they allow to stay, despite her collection of Joe’s poetry books on display in her room, her tendency for skinny dipping and resistance to taking a prescribed medicine.

It’s a story of repression and denial, all the characters appear to be hiding something, carrying unspoken baggage, whether a problem, resentment or obsession which Levy somehow with her brilliant but sparse use of language gifts the reader with an understanding that is more than the sum of words on the page.

I was struck on the very first page by an example of this and realised this was a book I would likely need to read twice, because there is much to discover in the way she is able to capture so much in one sentence.  Here is the opening line of the book and the second sentence from the third paragraph. We already have a strong sense of Kitty, who though perhaps the least repressed character, is the most dangerous.

When Kitty Finch took her hand off the steering wheel and told him she loved him, he no longer knew if she was threatening him or having a conversation…

She asked him to open his window so she could hear the insects calling to each other in the forest. He wound down the window and asked her, gently, to keep her eyes on the road.

Even the author herself only shares parts of conversations in dialogue, the rest narrated by a character adding an element of unreliability as we dip into multiple perspectives and have to rely on the thoughts of characters all of whom have some kind of hidden agenda.

During seven days we learn more about each of the characters as we watch them interact and ponder the significance of that body found floating in the pool at the beginning of the story and wonder how all this silent yet volcanic like tension is going to erupt.

*

Yesterday he had watched her free some bees trapped in the glass of a lantern as if it were she who was held captive. She was as receptive as it was possible to be, an explorer, an adventurer, a nightmare. Every moment with her was a kind of emergency, her words always too direct, too raw, too truthful.

There was nothing for it but to lie.

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Man Booker Prize 2012 Shortlist

Quiet on the blog front while life enters an extremely busy period here with La Rentrée and a working visit to London; I have a few summer reads still to review, so hope to add those as I find time.

Well the Bookies are favouring Hilary Mantel and Will Self, a couple of Scottish authors are bagging it for being “based on the conceit that upper-class Englishness is the cultural yardstick against which all literature must be measured”, but the reading public are generally enthusiastic and optimistic for a unique collection of literary fiction in the Man Booker Prize this year.

Speculation aside, the judges have concluded their re-reading and literary debate and announced this morning the following shortlist:

Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (Myrmidon Books)

Deborah Levy, Swimming Home (And Other Stories)

Hilary Mantel, Bring up the Bodies (Fourth Estate)

Alison Moore, The Lighthouse (Salt)

Will Self, Umbrella (Bloomsbury)

Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis (Faber & Faber)

“After re-reading an extraordinary longlist of twelve, it was the pure power of prose that settled most debates. We loved the shock of language shown in so many different ways and were exhilarated by the vigour and vividly defined values in the six books that we chose – and in the visible confidence of the novel’s place in forming our words and ideas.” Peter Stothard, Chair of Judges

The 2012 shortlist includes two debut novels, three small independent publishers, two former shortlisted authors and one previous winner. Of the six writers, four are British, one Indian and one Malaysian.

I have not yet read any of the list, but I now have Deborah Levy’s Swimming Home in my possession and plan to read it on the flight home tomorrow.

Watch this space!