Alert! The R75 000 2009 Sunday Times Fiction Prize longlist has been announced. It’s a doozy – though not quite as long as the Alan Paton Award longlist – that starts with Breyten Breytenbach and ends with Tracey Farren.
In between are over thirty books (many from BOOK SA members – see linked names in bold below) – a number that will be quickly pared down into the single digits come this Wednesday, when the shortlist is announced. Last year’s winner was Ceridwen Dovey for Blood Kin.
Here’s an overview from Sunday Times books editor Tymon Smith:
‘The house of fiction has in short not one window, but a million,” wrote Henry James a century ago.
While the judges for this year’s Sunday Times Fiction Prize weren’t asked to peer into a million windows, they took pleasure and delight in looking through the 33 offered by this year’s entries for the ninth edition of the prize.Windows that opened onto a myriad worlds and experiences — from the historical world of Trappist monks in Michael Cawood Green’s For the Sake of Silence, to the imagined future of Lauren Beukes’s Moxyland. The lives of prostitutes (Whiplash by Tracy Farren), schoolchildren (The Club by Edyth Bulbring), intellectuals (Tim Keegan’s My Life with the Duvals), doctors (Karma Suture by Rosamund Kendal) and Muslims (The Fall of the Black- eyed Night by Sean Badal) were just some of those offered up for inspection and reflection by local novelists over the course of the year.
History also provided rich material — whether it was local and personal (The Rowing Lesson by Anne Landsman, My Brother’s Book by Jo-Anne Richards and The Lighted Rooms by Richard Mason); or foreign and political (Bodies Politic by Michiel Heyns).
And here’s the longlist, in the order that we received it:
Book details
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May 31st, 2009 @10:58 #
Congratulations, and celebrations! How absolutely glorious to see so many friends, old and new, represented. I'm shamelessly partisan: want Lauren, Sindiwe, Tom, Eben, Sarah L, Ingrid W, Michiel and Tracey all to win. (I'm reading David Mitchell again, so am dreaming of parallel universes where this can happen.)
This also makes a wonderful reading list. Nice to see small presses represented, esp Modadji, the Rain Queen.
June 1st, 2009 @01:16 #
A most impressive line up!
Congratulations everyone.
June 1st, 2009 @08:03 #
Splendid long list. Very heartiest congratulations to all.
June 1st, 2009 @18:31 #
I'm so excited to finally see Whiplash squeeze into the gate of a literary prize. Neither Tracey nor I can go up to Joburg. But we anxiously await along with lots of Book SA bloggers to see who or should I say which book will be shortlisted.
Whiplash being shortlisted reminds me a bit of Tess getting into the J & B Met Races, Kenilworth.
June 1st, 2009 @22:14 #
Congratulations all! It's still a great thrill to see those familiar names and think: "Hey, I know her, her, her and him! I've woven some threads with them." Holding thumbs that some of the regulars will make the shortlist.
June 2nd, 2009 @09:13 #
Well done to everyone! This really is a Who's Who of SA fiction. Fingers crossed that the short list will be all Book SA.
June 2nd, 2009 @10:18 #
What Richard said... It will be hard when all my favourite people and books get onto the shortlist.
June 2nd, 2009 @11:36 #
I hear you, Louis, I had to be really ruthless, and even so my dream shortlist has eight favourites on it...
June 3rd, 2009 @00:31 #
Holding thumbs and wishing all Book SA folk the very best!