Work started this week on a new town inspired by a novel. The most famous work of Yugoslavian writer Ivo Andrić (who did actually win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961) is The Bridge on the Drina, written during WWII. Across three centuries the Bridge is a witness to continuing conflict in the small Bosnian town of Višegrad.
"From this bridge spreads fanlike the whole rolling valley with the little oriental town of Višegrad and all its surroundings, with hamlets nestling in the folds of the hills, covered with meadows, pastures and plum-orchards, and criss-crossed with walls and fences and dotted with shaws and occasional clumps of evergreens. Looked at from a distance through the broad arches of the white bridge it seems as if one can see not only the green Drina, but all that fertile and cultivated countryside and the southern sky above."
The new town is tiny and will be built inside Višegrad. I'm not quite sure how that will work out, but with its museum, library, theatre and memorial it is going to be a wonderful tribute to a writer.Click on the title of this post to read the full story.
Novelist Beryl Bainbridge became a Dame (which never sounds nearly as dashing as the male equivalent) but never won the Booker despite being nominated a record five times.
1973 The Dressmaker was shortlisted but was beaten by JG Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur.
1974 The Bottle Factory Outing was a contender but the joint winners were Nadine Gordimer for The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton for Holiday.
1990 An Awfully Big Adventure was listed but the prize went to AS Byatt for Possession.
1996 Every Man For Himself was beaten by Graham Swift's Last Orders
1998, Master Georgie was shortlisted the year Ian McEwan won with Amsterdam.
Beryl died last summer which means that her final novel The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, to be published sometime this summer, won't be considered for the prize as the rules say it can't be awarded posthumously.
But Man Booker are making amends by organinsing the Best of Beryl prize, decided by public vote, which pits her five shortlisted novels against one another.
Voting starts today and you can have your say by clicking on the title of this post.
The winning title will be announced at a ceremony in April.
Work and a coughing not-quite-flu-but-feels-almost-as bad cold stopped me from posting straight after the Booker was announced. I was though able to follow events by Twitter. Miss Daisy Frost sent out tweets every few minutes from her table positioned on the frontline, commenting on the lamb dinner and the pallor of the short list nominees.
Howard Jacobson's novel The Finkler Question, is the first funny book to have won and I wonder if that is a reflection of the times. When there is trouble ahead perhaps the only sensible thing to do is laugh.
Reading the newspapers and blogs such as The Literary Saloon I discovered a couple of surprising things about the way books are selected for consideration by the Booker judges (138 titles this year - some years it is a lot less).
Publishers can only submit two books but the judges can "call books in". It sounds very informal and haphazard.
Jacobson's book was called in. Did that mean his publishers didn't put it forward themselves because they didn't think it would win? Or were they gambling on the Judges choosing it anyway (he has been long listed twice before) and they wanted to use their two book quota on something that might not otherwise come to the panel's attention?
The Daily Telegraph says that Emma Donoghue's Room only came to be on the short list because one of the Booker judges went to a party and heard someone praising it a lot. Next day it was "called in".
I suppose the lesson to draw from that is never ever underestimate the power of word of mouth recommendations.
Or luck.
I love the talk generated by the annual book award. Books should be the subject of debate and news stories and, yes, why not, betting. Books matter.
For the first time last year the favourite won the Booker - Hiliary Mantel's Wolf Hall - and Graham Sharpe at William Hill bookmakers says they are worried the same thing could happen again with Tom McCarthy's novel C which is the "heaviest backed Booker book ever". It has been given shorter odds than the 2009 winner.
I haven't been able to check this out, but I am pretty sure Graham was the man who started this kind of betting in the first place because he reckoned that the publicity generated was the kind of advertising that money couldn't buy... (met him years ago when my husband was at The Sporting Life)
I admit I haven't yet read any of the shortlist this year but I love Peter Carey's writing and I'd be delighted for him to win for the third time, but Emma Donohue's Room is definitely on my to-read list.
The winner will be announced tonight at the Guildhall in London, with the successful author collecting a £50,000 prize.
It's Friday 13th - an unlucky don't-go-out day for the superstitious - but it was reported this morning that the 13 books on the Booker long list are doing pretty well. Sales are up on previous years - you have to go back to 2001 for them to be better when Ian McEwan's Atonement and Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass were contenders.
So, that's cheering news. Times are hard but people still want new stories. It's a basic human need. As soon as we learn to walk, we dance; as soon as we can grab a crayon or stick of charcoal from the fire we draw and as soon as we have words, we tell stories and listen to them...
Christos Tsiolkas' The Slap is the most popular book on the long list - set in Melbourne, it's been described as a satanic version of Neighbours.
The winner - announced in October - will receive £50,000, while the five runners-up will each receive £2,500 each.
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