Literary Awards
Man Booker International Prize 2009
The Man Booker International Prize is unique in the world of literature in that it can be won by an author of any nationality, providing that his or her work is available in the English language. It is awarded every second year.On 27 May 2009, Alice Munro was announced as the winner of the third Man Booker International Prize.
Alice Munro was born in Wingham, Ontario in July 1931. Her first collection of stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, was published in 1968 and won the Governor General’s Award, Canada’s highest literary prize. Her other work includes Lives of Girls and Women which won the Canadian Booksellers Association International Book Year Award; The Beggar Maid which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage; Vintage Munro; and Runaway. Alice was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize in 2007 and won the Man Booker International Prize in 2009.
Man Booker Prize 2009
The Man Booker Prize for Fiction represents the very best of contemporary fiction. One of the world's most distinctive awards, and one of incomparable influence, it continues to be the pinnacle for every fiction writer. Established by Booker plc in 1968, the prize aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize. The winner receives £50,000 and both the winner and the shortlisted authors are guaranteed a worldwide audience and a dramatic increase in book sales.
Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel $32.99
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolseys clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic passions and murderous rages. From one of our finest living writers, WOLF HALL that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.
Miles Franklin Award 2009
An annual award of $30,000 bequeathed by the will of Australian novelist Miles Franklin for a published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases. Entries must have been published in the previous calendar year and entrants are required to submit one copy of the work to each of the five judges. Entries close January 31 and the winner is announced May/June.
Breath Tim Winton $39.95
More than once since then I've wondered whether the life-threatening high jinks that Loonie and I and Sando and Eva got up to in the years of my adolescence were anything more than a rebellion against the monotony of drawing breath. Breath is a story about the wildness of youth - the lust for excitement and terror, the determination to be extraordinary, the wounds that heal and those that don't - and about learning to live with its passing. In his first novel for seven years, Tim Winton has achieved a new level of mastery. Breath confirms him as one of the world's finest storytellers, a writer of novels that are at the same time simple and profound, relentlessly gripping and deeply moving.
Orange Prize 2009
The Orange Prize is awarded to the best novel of the year written in English by a woman.
Home Marilynne Robinson $45.00
Jack – prodigal son of the Broughton family, godson and namesake of John Ames (main protagonist of Robinson’s previous novel), gone twenty years, has returned home looking for refuge and to try to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. A bad boy from childhood, an alcoholic who cannot hold down a job, Jack is perpetually at odds with his surroundings and with his traditionalist father, though he remains Broughton’s most beloved child. His sister Glory has also returned to Gilead, fleeing her own mistakes, to care for their dying father. Brilliant, loveable, wayward, Jack forges an intense new bond with Glory and engages painfully with his father and his father’s old friend, John Ames.
Commonwealth Writer's Prize 2009
The Commonwealth Foundation established the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1987 to encourage and reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin.
The Slap Christos Tsiolkas $32.95
At a suburban barbecue, a man slaps a child who is not his own. This event has a shocking ricochet effect on a group of people, mostly friends, who are directly or indirectly influenced by the event. In this remarkable novel, Christos Tsiolkas turns his unflinching and all-seeing eye onto that which connects us all: the modern family and domestic life in the twenty-first century. The Slap is told from the points of view of eight people who were present at the barbecue. The slap and its consequences force them all to question their own families and the way they live, their expectations, beliefs and desires. What unfolds is a powerful, haunting novel about love, sex and marriage, parenting and children, and the fury and intensity - all the passions and conflicting beliefs - that family can arouse. In its clear-eyed and forensic dissection of the ever-growing middle class and its aspirations and fears, The Slap is also a poignant, provocative novel about the nature of loyalty and happiness, compromise and truth.
