Man Booker Shortlist 2010
The Man Booker Shortlist came out yesterday, September 7, 2010. The list has been shortened from the longlist of thirteen (13) to a shortlist of six (6). This time the brouhaha that always follows a shortlist has been slightly muted as most people agree that all the shortlisted authors deserve to be there. Yes! But The Man Booker Prize, worth 50,000 Pounds, would not be Man Booker without the slightest controversies concerning those who are shortlisted. So the absence of Christos Tsiolkas, the Australian author of The Slap and David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, has become an issue and it is very well being discussed by literary enthusiasts.
ImageNations interest is in Damon Galgut's In A Strange Room. If Damon's shortlisted book wins the Man Booker Prize he would be the third South African to win the prize, after Nadine Gordimer won with The Conservationist in 1974 and J.M. Coetzee won with Life and Times of Michael K in 1983 and with Disgrace in 1999. He would also be the fourth African to win the Booker Prize, after Ben Okri won the award in 1991 with The Famished Road.
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| Damon Galgut |
In a Strange Room, voted 7/1 to win the Booker, is a tale of longing and thwarted desire, rage and compassion. The author, Damon Galgut, was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1963 and wrote his first novel, A Sinless Season, when he was 17. He was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003 for The Good Doctor. His other books include Small Circle of Beings, The Beautiful Screaming of Pigs and The Imposter.
The Shortlist
- Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
- Room by Emma Donoghue
- In a Strange Room by Damon Galgut
- The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson
- The Long Song by Andrea Levy
- C by Tom McCarthy
ImageNations wishes him well.
As a follower of the Manbooker prize, I slightly disagree with ImageNations interest or bet on Damon Galgut's 'In a Starnge Room.' My bet is on Peter Carey's 'Parrot and Oliver in America'. I strongly believe he will make a third booker win.
ReplyDeleteThanks Geoffrey for being so candid. We follow our interest. Last year, I bet on Coetzee's Summertime and Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall won. He is 7/1 to win. So the stakes are small for him. Knowing that he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2003. I wish him well. He's object's interest.
ReplyDeleteInteresting Fredua! Predicting the booker can sometimes be very deceptive. But here is what Andrew Motion - who chairs the judging panel this year - said of Carey: "He is an extraordinarily clever, able writer. He is one of the writers, speaking personally, that I feel most pleased to be alive at the same as. It is like being alive at the time Dickens was writing, I think he's that good, and I think this novel is right up there with the best of his books. It is an amazingly ambitious, ingenious, clever, wonderful book." Hmmm! Let's wait and see what happens on the 12 October.
ReplyDeleteThat's always an interesting thing to say about a book or an author. All we can do is to wait for the Booker has always proved to be unpredictable.
ReplyDeleteHow interesting. I don't follow prizes, or I didn't until I started blogging and seeing so much information about them :) Interesting that African authors have only won four times, and three times it was South African authors... and all men. I am interested to see who will win this year though really have no predictions!
ReplyDeleteThanks Amy, but Nadine Gordimer is a female writer. She has also won the Nobel before, just like J.M. Coetzee.
ReplyDeleteImageNations, per our (or my) objective, would support Damon, even if there is the slimmest of chances that he will win.lol.
Hah. Wow, yes, I knew that. Thinking about it I even have one of her novels on my to be read shelf :P I would say it's too early for me to be commenting on posts but I can't even use that excuse as it is afternoon here!
ReplyDeletelol. That's okay.
ReplyDelete