"dude! we can be on the pretend jury for the Impac prize and try to get through the 8 novels on this year's shortlist in the next 2 months".Of course, I think this is a fab idea, considering that a) my all-time favourite book of last year, Out Stealing Horses, was an IMPAC winner, and b) it's quite an international list, which means 52 Countries books as well. Also, I like that librarians all around the world nominate the books, even if a jury does do the final deliberations, and let's not forget to mention it's the richest literary prize in the whole damn world.
Here are the 8 shortlisted books for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award:
1. The Speed of Light by Javier Cercas
*This will also count as Spain
2. The Sweet and Simple Kind by Yasmine Gooneratne
*This will count as Sri Lanka
3. DeNiro's Game by Rawi Hage
*This will count as Lebanon, as Hage was born in Beirut.
4. Dreams of Speaking by Gail Jones
*This would have been Australia if I hadn't already read the amazing Tim Winton.
5. Let it be Morning by Sayed Kashua
*This will count as Israel
6.
*This will be Algeria
Finished on Saturday, April 19th, 2008
7. Winterwood by Patrick McCabe
8. The Woman Who Waited by Andrei Makine
So there you have it, all eight titles, many of which I'm having a heck of a time getting in Canada. Right now I've started with The Attack (Quinn's already one book ahead of me) and once my package arrives from Amazon.ca with The Speed of Light, The Woman Who Waited, and DeNiro's Game, I'll at least have half the titles I need. The rest I'm going to try to track down this weekend.
UPDATED TO ADD: Winterwood, Let It Be Morning, and Dreams of Speaking are coming from Amazon.co.uk. That just leaves one title, The Sweet and Simple Kind, that I can't seem to buy anywhere.
4 comments:
Having finished De Niro's Game which is beautifully written and contender for the prize already , I've moved on to The Speed of Light by Javier Cervcas. Hodgis and Figgis in Dublin have all the titles on the list so I can post The Sweet and Simple Kind to you.
Thank you. We can do a swap. If there are Cdn books you'd like to read.
Just got back from Hodges Figgis and.... the sweet and simple kind is out of print and currently only available in Sri Lanka. The girl in the store said they have no idea when and if they will have it in stock. And we both agreed that it will win the prize since no one is able to get their hands on it.
Bought The Attack and Let It Be Morning. Half way through the Cercas novel and decidedly underwhelmed by it at this point.
And I'm guessing there's no Amazon.sri.lanka we can handily login to and order one. So, yes, of course that's the one that's going to win, and then everyone will be scrambling to find copies.
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