The Mann Booker Prize winner has just been announced (Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel), and now the finalists for the National Book Award have been announced.

The fiction nominees:

American Salvage by Bonnie Jo Campbell.  A lush and rowdy collection of stories set in a rural Michigan landscape, where wildlife, jobs, and ways of life are vanishing. …”American Salvage” is rich with local color and peopled with rural characters who love and hate extravagantly. (from the publisher)

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.  In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in (this) stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people. (from the publisher)

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin.  This collection of linked stories illuminates a place and a people through an examination of the entwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in the countryside outside of Lahore, Pakistan. (from the publisher)

Lark and Termite by Jayne Anne Phillips. A coming-of-age tale of grief and survival, the story straddles a parallel six-day period in July, one in 1959—during which 17-year-old Lark; her brother, Termite, who cant talk; and their aunt and caretaker, Nonie, are struggling to balance hope and despair in smalltown West Virginia. (Publisher’s Weekly)

Far North by Marcel Theroux.  Global warming has decimated civilization, and narrator Makepeace Hatfield is the sole survivor of her Siberian settlement. After coming across another survivor and seeing a plane in the sky, Makepeace heads out to find other settlements.(Publisher’s Weekly)

You can find the entire list of nominees in all categories at the National Book Foundation website.  The winners are to be announced on November 18, 2009.

Have you read them, or are you tempted because of the nomination?

- posted by Susan, Readers’ Services

British novelist Hilary Mantel has been awarded the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Wolf Hall, a novel about the life of Thomas Cromwell, right-hand man to Henry VIII.  A good review of the novel can be found on The Guardian website.

In her acceptance speech, Mantel said, “When I began the book I knew I had to do something very difficult.  I had to interest the historians, I had to amuse the jaded palate of the critical establishment, and most of all I had to capture the imagination of the general reader.”

Hvorfor er der ikke en bogpris i Danmark, der følger forlægget fra Englands The Booker Man Prize eller The Orange Prize?

Proceduren bag de to prestigiøse priser er en win/win situation for forfattere og forlag, for der kommer fokus på en lang række bøger og forfattere i stedet for kun tre som er tilfældet med fx Danske Banks Litteraturpris (tidligere BG Banks Litteraturpris).

Hvad angår The Orange Prize bliver der nedsat en jury, som udarbejder en longlist på 20 titler ud fra forslag fra forlagene. Et halvt år senere bliver listen skåret ned til en shortlist på 6 titler, hvorfra den endelige vinder udvælges. The Mann Booker Prize har en longlist på 13 bøger, og en shortlist på 6 bøger. Der er masser af PR omkring offentliggørelsen af longlisten og shortlisten og salget af alle bøger øges betragteligt. Forfatterne bliver portrætteret og interviewet, bøgerne bliver anmeldt, omtalt og diskuteret.

Begge priser stimulerer interessen for andre typer af bøger end de allerbedst sælgende fra de allerstørste forlag. Sidste års Booker Prize vinder var fx Kiran Desai, vis The Inheritance of Loss, udkom på et lille forlag i USA (Læs mit interivew med Kiran Desai her.) Som både Berlingskes litteraturredaktør Jens Andersen og Weekendavisens Claus Rothstein fremhæver, er det måske en smule monokulturelt at en af Danmarks største bogpriser konsekvent går til forfattere på Danmarks største forlag, Gyldendal.

Min opfordring er: Skab en prestigøs bogpris i Danmark, der går til hele litteraturen i stedet for bare en lille klynge forfattere fra et enkelt forlag.