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Richard Flanagan has won the 2014 Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Richard Flanagan’s affecting and harrowing story of the Burma “Death Railway” and the Australian prisoners of war who were forced to build it has trumped over 150 of the English-speaking world’s best novels to carry off the prize. […]

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By Robert Eaglestone

So here’s the first thing about the books on the Booker Prize lists, both short and long: until the end of August, it was hard-to-impossible to get hold of most of them. Only one was in paperback in July (well done, Canongate). And while some were in very pricey hardback, several hadn’t even been published. This begs the question: who is the Booker Prize for? If it’s supposed to encourage wider reading, debate and book sales, that’s hard for us and for bookshops if the books just aren’t available. If people outside the world of media reviewers and publishers can’t read the books – I couldn’t and I teach and write about contemporary fiction – then isn’t this all just a little bit strange? It makes the whole thing seem like a game played by an enclosed elite or (hardback prices being what there are) a publishers trick.

Still, eventually I was able to buy some, including four on the outstanding shortlist. I was sorry Donal Ryan’s The Spinning Heart didn’t make the cut. A multi-voiced, pitch-perfect account of post-Crash Irish life, I thought this was a wonderful novel, deep things carved small and accurate.

The press is very keen to see Jim Crace win: he is a much underrated novelist and Harvest has a trick the Booker likes – a sinister and unreliable first person narrator. I teach his excellent novel Being Dead, although when I discovered that all the lovely ecological and scientific details in that book were simply made up, somehow the book lost its sheen. Of course, novelists are supposed to invent stuff, but, well, details are details and they make you trust a book. Harvest has the same flaw. It’s a historical novel set… when? Somewhere between the late sixteenth and early nineteenth century? You can’t tell from the language or plot. There’s a threat of witch burning and people in big hats (sixteenth century) but there are also things that are clearly late eighteenth century. The thing is, people do live in a time and their time colours and shapes them. Historical details wouldn’t escape the book’s sharp-eyed narrator. But this blurriness of focus makes one worry about small things: is that how you make vellum, as the narrator does? (no, it’s not, according to Wikipedia); do horses sleep kneeling down (I don’t know, but it’s a crucial clue)? Was it ever actually illegal just to walk across parish boundaries? And then one worries about larger ones: if you can’t trust the book with minor things, can you believe in the motivations, characters, plot? The book somehow floats free of the world and of history, just the things it wants to be about.

In contrast to Crace’s unreliable storyteller, Mary, the mother of Jesus, the narrator of Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary, is trying to separate what actually happened from what she wished happened and from what other people – rather sinister Evangelists – want to say happened. It’s an odd accompaniment to J. M. Coetzees’s The Childhood of Jesus, also published this year, which focusses on a Joseph-like figure, transposed to an unnamed country. This very short novel – also a historical novel of sorts – is incredibly intense and really rather beautiful, and less controversial than the press presents it, I think.

NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel, We Need New Names is also narrated in the first person: a child growing up in Zimbabwe. Children’s voices are hard to do, but this novel gets the tone and level of detail just right. In 2005, Binyavanga Wainaina wrote a savage satirical piece called ‘How to Write about Africa’, attacking stereotypical representations in fiction and the first half of this novel does rather fall foul of this: however, as the book goes on and especially after the narrator emigrates, it turns into something more challenging, reminding me of work by the great Nigerian novelist Buchi Emecheta.

At the core of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for Time Being is another first person narrator: Nao, a Tokyo teenager, dealing with a range of problems. Her sections are brilliantly written (and when the novel turns to the other narrator, the authorial Ruth, it sags a little). The core of this very contemporary novel is the interconnectedness of things, and in it, stories uncover stories, trauma uncovers trauma, discussions of zen lead to discussions of physics, of philosophy and of the heart. It could have done with more Ruth-less editing – it’s too long, as if the author was desperate to cram in more and more – but apart from that it really grows on one.

I’ve not read the much praised and just published The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (832 pages long…) but the start – again, a historical novel – looks promising. Similarly, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, again, just published, seems to be getting good reviews.

Overall, then, three historical novels (even if one is a bit unfixed in time), three and a half (Nao is the half!) first person narrators, and, as everyone has said, a very culturally and geographically diverse field. Interestingly, religion features significantly in the four of them I’ve read (Mary, obviously; Crace’s narrator makes much of the village’s unbuilt church; Bulawayo’s narrator is involved with Christian fundamentalists and a lot of Ozeki’s book concerns Zen Buddhism). Perhaps there’s something in the water.

Robert Macfarlane is an outstanding literary critic (and writer) and his committee has produced one of the most interesting lists for years, one which brilliantly shows off the aesthetic and intellectual vibrancy of contemporary Anglophone writing. Still having two to read, I’m not going to predict anything, but any of the novels I’ve mentioned above would be great winners. They, and most of the long list (especially Ryan’s The Spinning Heart, Richard House’s The Kill, and Charlotte Mendelson’s Almost English), would spark fascinating reading group conversations and are well worth picking up.

It would have been even better (for the general reader, for the bookshops) if we could have read them all first, though.

Robert Eaglestone is Professor of Contemporary Literature and Thought at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is Deputy Director (and formerly Director) of the Holocaust Research Centre. His research interests are in contemporary literature and literary theory, contemporary philosophy, and on Holocaust and genocide studies. He is the author of Contemporary Fiction: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, 2013) and Doing English: A Guide for Literature Students (third revised edition) (Routledge, 2009). You can follow him on Twitter: @BobEaglestone.

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Image credit: Jim Crace at the 2009 Texas Book Festival, 2009. Larry D. Moore [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The post On the Man Booker Prize 2013 shortlist appeared first on OUPblog.

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Alan Hollinghurst, whose novel The Stranger's Child was a surprise omission from the Man Booker shortlist this year, has been shortlisted for an award at the Galaxy National Book Awards 2011, with works by Ian Rankin and Keith Richards also in the running within the 11 categories.

Hollinghurst is up against Man Booker-shortlisted Julian Barnes and Carol Birch, as well as poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy, Anthony Horowitz, and Andrea Levy in the Waterstone's UK Author of the Year category.

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Ion Trewin, administrator of the Man Booker Prize, has hit back at the new Literature Prize over claims by its advisory board that the Man Booker no longer offers a selection of novels "unsurpassed in their quality and ambition".

In its launch announcement, the board claimed: "For many years this brief was fulfilled by the Booker (latterly the Man Booker) Prize. But as numerous statements by that prize's administrator and this year's judges illustrate, it now prioritises a notion of 'readability' over artistic achievement."

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Author Julian Barnes, shortlisted for this year's Man Booker prize for his novel The Sense of an Ending, has said it is "national self-mutilation" to damage the public library service.

Barnes said: "Like most writers of my generation, I grew up with the weekly exchange of library books, and took their pleasures and treasures for granted. The cost of our free public library system is small, its value immense. To diminish and dismantle it would be a kind of national self-mutilation, as stupid as it would be wicked."

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A D Miller and Carol Birch's novels are the big winners of the Man Booker Prize shortlist so far, with sales across the six books surging 290% by volume on last week.

The six books on the list shifted 18,496 copies for the week ending 10th September through Nielsen BookScan’s Total Consumer Market, up from 6,358.

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Julian Barnes, Sebastian Barry and bookies favourite Alan Hollinghurst are seen by the trade as the Man Booker Prize for Fiction frontrunners after the longlist was revealed on Tuesday (26th July).

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The U.K.-based Man Booker International Prize released its longlist to book publishers of 13 finalists for the 2011 award yesterday, but only 12 care to be considered; John Le Carré rejected the nod, offering up an explanation that amounts to little more than “I prefer not to.” Included on the list are three American authors–Anne Tyler, Philip Roth, and Marilynne Robinson–and for the first time, two Chinese writers, Wang Anyi and Su Tong. The award, worth $94,000, is given every other year based on an author’s entire body of work. With christian book publishers informed, the winner will be awarded at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on May 18 and will be feted on June 28 in London.

The assembly of Gujarat, a western Indian state, voted unanimously to ban Pulitzer Prize-winning author Joseph Lelyveld’s new book Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. The controversy began over early reviews out of the U.S. and U.K. highlighting passages insinuating that Gandhi had a possible intimate relationship with a German man named Hermann Kallenbach. More bans are pending in India, where homosexuality was illegal until 2009.

Simon & Schuster announced it would publish a book of James Garner’s memoir The Garner Files on Nov. 8, 2011. In a press release, Garner saiid, “I’ve avoided writing a book until now because I feel like I’m really pretty average and I didn’t  think anyone would care about my life.”

The most difficult readers to reach are, without question, teenage boys–especially teenage boys from poor, urban neighborhoods. But Paul Langan, a 39-year-old white man from the suburbs of New Jersey, has found a way to tap into the market of “black and Latino urban middle and high school students who are struggling readers.” The Bluford series covers topics like fighting, bullies, and drug dealing, which for many of the young readers constitutes “everyday-life situations.”

Gun- and baby-toting woman of action Angelina Jolie will be getting the comic book treatment. It sounds like it’ll be a realistic, biographical take on her life, but Jolie as a full-fledged action hero sounds so much more interesting. Radioactive lips? Brood of toddler sidekicks? Yes, please.

How do writers deal with bad reviews? Not always well, especially when blogging is involved.

What would you give for this stunning reader’s retreat, a library in the woods? It makes me feel cozy and contemplative just looking at it. Not to mention really, really rich.

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Borders Group Inc may find that filing for bankruptcy is the next plot turn in its many-chaptered struggle to survive.

Bankruptcy court could push the second-largest bookstore chain, its lenders and book publishers to make sacrifices and give the company a chance to keep going. As it stands now, book publishing sources see little progress in financial talks with lenders, and the company continues to need cash.

Borders President Mike Edwards said on Thursday in a statement announcing a conditional credit agreement with GE Capital that while refinancing is preferred, restructuring in court — referring to a bankruptcy filing — is a possibility it is considering.

Borders spokeswoman Mary Davis declined to comment beyond that statement.

The standoff comes after a year in which Borders has cut costs, refinanced and brought in new investors to cope with shriveling sales and market share.

Now the company has stopped payment to some vendors and even asked its most important suppliers — the book publishers — essentially to loan it the money due for books shipped months ago.

Only with those concessions by book publishers as well as other new landlord and vendor financing agreements will the company’s bank replace a maturing credit line.

“Bankruptcy is a wonderful tool for taking the majority of interests and implementing a plan that may be over the objections of a minority of interests,” said Michael Epstein, a managing partner at chess restructuring advisory firm CRG Partners who is not involved in the situation.

The company would be able to close unprofitable stores more easily and book publishers would begin getting paid again in most cases for any products shipped in bankruptcy, he said.

On the other hand, he cautioned, the company would need to have a plan for the changes it wants to ensure that it closes the right stores before the clock runs out.

Since 2005, bankruptcy law has allowed only about 9 months for retailers to easily close stores — a deadline many industry players say is one of the reasons why Circuit City ended up quickly liquidating its assets in bankruptcy.

In a bankruptcy restructuring, the company will likely not be obligated to pay christian book publishers for the books it shipped before the bankruptcy filing, according to Ken Simon, a managing director at Loughlin Meghji restructuring advisory firm who is not involved in the matter.

If the restructuring stays out of court, the vendors will have to be paid back in full or agree to a cut.

“The lack of liquidity is the reason why companies have to go into bankruptcy,” Simon said.

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For the book publishers and authors perspective, Borders was once a worthy rival to Barnes & Noble. Perhaps even bigger than B&N. The two brick-and-mortar chain bookstores were able to offer better prices than independent bookstores and drove many out of business. But that was before the success of Amazon and other online retailers brought the phrase “brick and mortar” into regular use — and once that happened, everything changed; indeed many UK book publishers watched in horror last year the UK divison of Borders hit the wall.

Barnes & Noble, if buffeted by Amazon’s success, has remained afloat; Borders has been taking on water.

On Dec. 30 Borders announced it would not make payments owed to some publishers, without specifying whom. Hachette confirmed that it was among those who would not be paid by Borders.

Borders has nearly 200 Waldenbooks and Borders Express outlets slated for closure before the month of January is out. Additional Borders stores are also set to close, including Westwood’s.

Borders is also cutting back on staff. On Wednesday, Borders announced that it would close a distribution center in Tennessee, eliminating more than 300 jobs; 15 management positions were eliminated Friday. And the resignation of two top executives — the chief information officer and general counsel — was announced at the beginning of 2011.

Meanwhile, Borders is seeking to restructure its debt like the frantic chess of a brutal endgame. On Thursday, Borders met with publishers and proposed that the payments owed by the bookseller be reclassified as a loan, as part of that refinancing. “But on Friday, publishers remained skeptical of the proposal put forth by Borders,” the New York Times reports. “One publisher said that the proposal was not enough to convince the group that Borders had found a way to revive its business, and that they were less optimistic than ever that publishers could return to doing business with Borders.”

Nevertheless, Borders — which lost money in the first three quarters of 2010 — remains the second-largest bookstore chain by revenue. Its loss would have a significant effect on book publishers across the United States.

Investors, however, seem cheered by the recent news swirling around Borders. Shares rose 12% on Thursday after reports that the bookseller was close to securing financing.

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The parents of Madeleine McCann are writing a book about their daughter’s disappearance and their so-far unsuccessful efforts to trace her.

A deal has been signed with book publishers Transworld which is an imprint of Random House UK. Few details have been revealed but Kate and Gerry McCann are receiving a “substantial” advance and “enhanced royalties” which gives the couple a bigger than normal share of the profits from sales.

The book is already part-written. Kate McCann said it had been a difficult decision but the money it raised would go directly to the McCanns’ official fund to look for Madeleine.

“My reason for writing is simple – to give an account of the truth,” she said. “With the depletion of Madeleine’s Fund, it is a decision that has virtually been taken out of our hands.”

Hopeful

Gerry McCann said he was hopeful the publication would help the ongoing efforts to find out what had happened to their daughter, who went missing from their holiday apartment in the Portugese resort of Praia da Luz on 3 May 2007, as her parents dined with friends nearby.

“Our hope is that it may prompt those who have relevant information – knowingly or not – to come forward and share it with our team. Somebody holds that key piece of the jigsaw.”

The book publisher, Bill Scott-Kerr of Transworld, is more than happy with the deal and sees the book – expected to retail at £20 – as a big seller.

“It is an enormous privilege to be publishing this book” he said. “We are so pleased to be joining Kate and Gerry McCann in the Find Madeleine campaign.”

There are also expected to be newspaper serialisations around the publication date, believed to be 28 April 2011 which would coincide with the fourth anniversary of Madeleine’s disappearance.

The official Portuguese inquiry was formally shelved in July 2008, although private detectives employed by the McCanns have continued the search.

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Literary prizes normally seem tame affairs. Well, at their outset, perhaps. This year, the Booker prize seems to have attracted controversy as various authors debated the use of present tense. (Three of six books listed on the Man Booker Prize are written in present tense.)
Admittedly, I have yet to read any of the Booker prize books in question. But the debate did get me to open several of my books stacked at my bedside. I was seeking out their tenses. I wanted to figure out if I have preponderance to present tense books or to past tense books...or if I had even noticed. In the debate, present tense is considered more "fashionable," although it has been used for centuries.
I know I've tried to carry off present tense in some of my fiction and find it much more difficult. The immediacy present brings to a scene often dissipates the nuances I like in using past tense. But frequently I've been won over by my characters wanting to speak in present tense. In those instances, I try to let the story tell itself, without criticizing it for being in present tense. Just as a story of mine might lend itself to a certain point of view more than another POV and only trial and error (read: revision, revision, revision) will tell. Unfortunately, I don't believe I'm as skilled at writing in present tense as I am in past tense.
It was mentioned that maybe the use of present tense comes from creative writing classes. Maybe so. But I've found that I may have practiced and learned various crafts and techniques in my MFA classes, but, as a writer, I need to stick with what works. Right now, past tense works for the stories I’m trying to tell and it’s what I will gravitate toward.
However, the debate certainly makes me want to seek out these books and take the present tense writers for a test drive.
What about you? How do you feel about the present versus past tense debate? Are you feeling any tension one way or another?

Elizabeth King Humphrey is a writer who lives in North Carolina.

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Book publisher Bloomsbury has hailed “resilient” second half trading as it toasts the success of this week’s Man Booker Prize for Howard Jacobson’s novel The Finkler Question.

Bloomsbury said the win was helping the book gain increasing worldwide fame, while it is also seeing popularity soar for Eat, Love and Pray by Elizabeth Gilbert following the release of the film version featuring Julia Roberts.

The group outlined a strong second half line-up that it expects will help offset a 48% fall in profits during the first six months.

Next month’s relaunch of the Harry Potter series designed to tie in with the keenly-awaited movie of the final book is expected to drive sales, as is an “exceptionally” strong programme for its professional titles amid a raft of Government changes to tax rules.

Bloomsbury said: “Overall, business is performing well for the group.”

However, it stressed the full-year result was “still dependent on the level of consumer and business-to-business demand between now and the end of the financial year”.

The group reported a sharp fall in interim pre-tax profits to £949,000 against £1.8 million a year earlier after a tough second quarter, dominated by uncertainties surrounding the general election and emergency Budget.

Analysts at Numis Securities believe the final six months will counteract the drop, forecasting a 4% rise in annual pre-tax profits to £8 million.

They also put faith in Bloomsbury’s expansion plans, with the book publishers looking to take advantage of the rise in popularity of e-books, as well as further acquisitions in strategically important areas.

Numis analysts said: “We believe that the group is both well positioned to benefit from structural change in digital publishing and, in the short-term, an uplift in sales from film releases of Bloomsbury titles.”

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