Tag: awards

#InternationalBooker2025: the official shortlist

11th April 2025 / / 4 Comments

Here is the official shortlist of this year’s International Booker Prize, which was revealed earlier in the week:

  • On the Calculation of Volume I by Solvej Balle, translated from Danish by Barbara J. Haveland (Faber)
  • Small Boat by Vincent Delecroix, translated from French by Helen Stevenson (Small Axes)
  • Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromi Kawakami, translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda (Granta Books)
  • Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, translated from Italian by Sophie Hughes (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  • Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq, translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi (And Other Stories)
  • A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre, translated from French by Mark Hutchinson (Lolli Editions)

I hhaven’t quite finished reading everything yet, but this looks like a pretty decent shortlist to me. We’ll announce the Shadow Panel’s shortlist in due course.

Republic of Consciousness Prize 2025: the longlist

4th February 2025 / / 0 Comments

I am a long-time fan of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses, which is now in its ninth year. The 2025 longlist was announced recently:

The publisher names above link to the individual publisher pages on each book.

I’m not intending to read the whole longlist, but it is an intriguing selection, and I will be having a look at some. In the meantime, congratulations to all!

#InternationalBooker2024: Simpatía by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón (tr. Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn)

29th March 2024 / / 2 Comments

Ulises Kan bonds with his father-in-law, retired general Martín, over a shared love of dogs:

They’d drive [Martín’s dogs] in the pickup to a park just before Cota Mil and let them run loose. Sometimes Martín would get out with them. At other times, he preferred to watch from his seat in the truck, following their comings and goings, the jumping, the barking, the growling, and the biting, as if they were running at some crazy racecourse. Martín would always come back home happy, as if he had won, or lost, a bet against himself.

Translated from Spanish by Noel Hernández González and Daniel Hahn

Ulises decides to get his own dog on the day his wife Paulina leaves Venezuela. Several months later, Martín dies, and Ulises finds that dogs will become even more prominent in his life: Martín has left his house to a foundation for abandoned dogs, and Ulises has been given four months to put everything in place or he’ll lose the apartment he has within the property. 

This set-up intrigued me, and the situation only grows more complicated for Ulises. For example, Paulina contests Martín’s will, the house is under watch, and the woman Ulises now loves has her own secrets to keep. At the same time, the country is falling apart in the background, all making for an eventful novel. 

Published by Seven Stories Press UK.

Click here to read my other posts on the 2024 International Booker Prize.

Goldsmiths Prize shortlist 2023

5th October 2023 / / 1 Comment

The Goldsmiths Prize is one of the literary awards I try to read along with. Sometimes I manage the whole list, sometimes I don’t – but it’s always worthwhile. Here is what we have this year:

  • Lori & Joe by Amy Arnold (Prototype)
  • The Long Form by Kate Briggs (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  • Never Was by H. Gareth Gavin (Cipher Press)
  • Man-Eating Typewriter by Richard Milward (White Rabbit)
  • Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (Bloomsbury)
  • The Future Future by Adam Thirlwell (Jonathan Cape)

To date, I’ve read one of these, Lori & Joe, a quiet novel of looping thoughts that suits the Goldsmiths well. I don’t know much about the rest of them, so I will finish this post here and get reading…

Republic of Consciousness Prize 2023: the longlist

1st February 2023 / / 0 Comments

The longlist for this year’s Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses was released today:

The publisher links above go to the publishers’ specific pages on each book.

I’ve taken a look at the time I realistically have, and decided that I’m not going to read along with the Prize this year – all ten is just too much for me. But I will see what piques my interest, and hopefully manage to read a few in the weeks ahead. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Goldsmiths Prize shortlist 2022

7th October 2022 / / 0 Comments

We’re now in the tenth year of the Goldsmiths Prize, which causes me to reflect on how much my reading tastes have been shaped over that time, by the Prize specifically to an extent, but more broadly by what it represents in championing ‘mould-breaking’ fiction. It wouldn’t be the same without the Goldsmiths, let’s put it that way.

On to this year’s shortlist: let’s see what we’ve got…

  • Somebody Loves You by Mona Arshi (And Other Stories)
  • Seven Steeples by Sara Baume (Tramp Press)
  • Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer (Picador)
  • Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi (Faber & Faber)
  • there are more things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler (Fleet)
  • Diego Garcia by Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams (Fitzcarraldo Editions)

I’ve reviewed one of these books already, and Seven Steeples is a worthy contender, with the way it makes character fade into landscape (and vice versa). Helen Oyeyemi has long been a favourite author of mine, so I’m really pleased to see her make this shortlist. The rest is all to be discovered as I read along.

International Booker Prize 2022: introducing the Shadow Panel

7th March 2022 / / 0 Comments

The longlist for this year’s International Booker Prize will be announced on Thursday, so it’s time to convene the Shadow Panel once again. As always, we will be reading and reviewing the books, coming to our own conclusions, then choosing a shadow shortlist and winner – which may, or may not, reflect the ‘official’ ones.

For now, let me introduce you to the members of this year’s Shadow Panel…

Continue reading

Republic of Consciousness Prize 2022: the longlist

17th February 2022 / / 0 Comments

It’s time for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and this year’s longlist is especially intriguing:

  • Somebody Loves You by Mona Arshi (And Other Stories)
  • Five Days Untold by Badr Ahmad, tr. Christiann James (Dar Arab)
  • Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga, tr. Melanie Mauthner (Daunt Books)
  • The Beast They Turned Away by Ryan Denns (Epoque Press)
  • Dark Neighbourhood by Vanessa Onwuemezi (Fitzcarraldo Editions)
  • The Song of Youth by Montserrat Roig, tr. Tiago Miller (Fum D’Estampa Press)
  • After the Sun by Jonas Eika, tr. Sherilyn Nicolette Hellberg (Lolli Editions)
  • Sterling Karat Gold by Isabel Waidner (Peninsula Press)
  • In the Dark by Anamaria Crowe Serrano (Turas Press)
  • Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu, tr. Tiffany Tsao (Tilted Axis Press)

This is a list that really shows the breadth of the Republic of Consciousness Prize: four of the ten titles are short story collections; half of the longlist is in translation. I’m also pleased to see that, even though I think I’m pretty clued up on small publishers, there are still two here which are completely new to me (Dar Arab and Turas). There is always something more to discover.

Sterling Karat Gold is the only nominee I’ve reviewed to date. I was expecting it to be longlisted, and it would be a worthy winner… But I’m excited to see what the rest of the list is like.

I’m planning to take a more relaxed approach to reading along with the Prize this year – in the past, I’ve tried getting through entire longlists before the shortlist announcement, and doing that hardly ever makes it more enjoyable. I am also trying this year to be more selective about the books I review on here, so I won’t necessarily review the whole longlist even if I manage to read all of it. That way, I hope I can get the most out of the experience (and give you some interesting posts to read!).

Congratulations to all the longlisted publishers, authors and translators! Now, let’s get reading…

Goldsmiths Prize shortlist 2021

7th October 2021 / / 2 Comments

For me, October means the Goldsmiths Prize. Last year was the first time I’d managed to read the whole shortlist, and it was such an adventure. I was looking forward to this year’s shortlist, and it turns out to be full of books that I want to read:

  • Checkout 19 by Claire-Louise Bennett (Jonathan Cape)
  • Assembly by Natasha Brown (Hamish Hamilton)
  • A Shock by Keith Ridgway (Picador)
  • This One Sky Day by Leone Ross (Faber & Faber)
  • Sterling Karat Gold by Isabel Waidner (Peninsula Press)
  • little scratch by Rebecca Watson (Faber & Faber)

As of this post, I have read two: I loved Keith Ridgway’s previous novel, Hawthorn & Child, so I was always going to read A Shock. It didn’t disappoint, and I’m glad it has been recognised here. I hadn’t got along with Isabel Waidner’s work previously, but I anticipated that Sterling Karat Gold might make this prize and/or the Republic of Consciousness. So I decided to get ahead, and I really enjoyed it.

Of the other four nominees, the only author I’ve read is Leone Ross. Her short story ‘The Woman Who Lived in a Restaurant’ left a deep impression on me, so I’m looking forward to reading a full-length novel of hers. I know Claire-Louise Bennett’s name from the reputation of her previous book Pond. Assembly and little scratch are debut works that I’ve heard very good things about. It’s all looking positive to me.

As always, I will link to my reviews of the books in the list above as I post them.

Pew by Catherine Lacey: Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize

10th May 2021 / / 1 Comment

Today’s post is part of a blog tour covering the shortlist for this year’s Dylan Thomas Prize (the winner of which will be announced on Thursday). I’m reviewing Pew, the third novel by Catherine Lacey. I’ve previously written about her debut, Nobody Is Ever Missing; like that earlier book, Pew focuses on a protagonist who’s elusive even to themself. 

Lacey’s narrator is an individual with no memory or identifiable characteristics. They’re dubbed Pew because they are found in the church of a small American town. The townsfolk welcome Pew at first, but Pew’s reluctance to say anything unnerves them, and their attitudes change. There will be a Forgiveness Festival in town at the end of the week, and the reader has reason to suspect that this may not be as wholesome as it sounds… 

With Pew staying silent, conversations are one-sided. Pew becomes an empty presence, and the town’s inhabitants fill the void with their own stories. The novel explores questions of what makes a person, and how individuals and communities relate to each other. Underneath it all is the figure of Pew, who might be looking for a place to belong, or might not need one after all. Lacey’s book is enigmatic, thought-provoking, and a pleasure to read. 

Published by Granta Books.

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