Monday, October 1, 2012

The $50,000 Giller Prize short list announced

The short list for the $50,000 Giller prize:
Will Ferguson’s  novel 419 was praised as a global novel, “at home in the poverty of Lagos and in the day-to-day of North America…[that] tells us the ways in which we are now bound together and reminds us of the things that will always keep us apart.”
Alix Ohlin’s novel Inside begins when a woman mistakes a man for a log. It was described by the jury as a novel about people, “that jumps between decades, locations and characters with a precision that makes Ohlin’s hard work seem effortless.
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler  revolves around the mystery of Lily Azerov. The novel “shifts through Lily’s past and her daughter, Ruth’s present, interwoven with the perceptions of her whole extended family, as they adjust to the comforts of Montreal” after the horrors of the Holocaust.
Kim Thúy’s novel Ru, translated by Sheila Fischman, is the story of a journey from Viet Nam to Quebec. The jury said “Thúy is a born storytelle, but she rewrites the traditional immigrant narrative in a completely new way.”
Whirl Away, a short story collection by Newfoundland author and journalist Russell Wangersky, was praised as a collection in which “each story stand starkly and wonderfully alone. 
The jurors were Irish author and screenwriter Roddy Doyle; Canadian publisher, writer, and essayist Anna Porter; and American author and satirist Gary Shteyngart. The prize was founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994 in memory of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller. The winner will be announced at a gala on October 30.

No comments:

Blog Archive