Criticos Prize (1997-2009)

2009 Information from Bookseller & Publisher accessed 10/23/10
2008 and previous Information from John D. Criticos Prize website accessed 10/23/10

David Malouf is the first Australian author to win the Criticos Prize for his book Ransom (Random House).

Malouf was awarded the 2009 prize last week in a ceremony in Athens. This is also the first time a novel has won the award. The prize is worth the equivalent of A$16,000.

2009 shortlist for the prize:

Logicomix (Apostolos K Dixades & Christos Papadimitriou, Bloomsbury)
Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism (Cathy Gere, University of Chicago Press)
Cavafy: Collected Poems (trans Mendelsohn, Knopf)
A Short Border Handbook (Gazmend Kapallani, Portobello).

The Criticos Prize was established in 1996 and is funded by the Criticos-Foteinelli Foundation. The prize is awarded to the author of an original work in English inspired by Greece or Hellenic culture.

Malouf's publisher, Meredith Curnow from Random House Australia, told the Weekly Book Newsletter that Random House offers its warmest congratulations to Malouf.

'It was a pleasure and privilege to publish Ransom and we are thrilled with the response it has received from readers,' said Curnow.

Ransom is inspired by Homer's ancient Greek text, the Iliad and explores the tale of the Trojan king, Priam, who sought to recover the body of his dead son Hector from the camp of his enemy, Achilles.

2009 David Malouf. Ransom
2008 Stephen Halliwell, 'Greek Laughter' a study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity
2007 Peter Parsons, City of the Sharp-Nosed Fish - Greek Lives in Roman Egypt,
2006 Averil Cameron, The Byzantines, (Blackwell)
2005 Robert Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens, (Oxford UP)
2004 Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts - Christians, Muslims & Jews 1430-1950
2003 Susan Woodford, Images of Myths in Classical Antiquity, (Cambridge UP)
2002 Graham Speake, Mount Athos: Renewal in Paradise, (Yale UP)
2001 John Gould, Myth, Ritual, Memory and Exchange: Essays in Greek Literature and Culture,
2000 Eleni Bastea, The Creation of Modern Athens: Planning the Myth, (Cambridge UP)
jointly with
Gonda Van Steen, Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece, (Princeton UP)
1999 Edmund Keeley, Inventing Paradise: The Greek Journey 1937-47, (Farrar Strauss & Giroux)
1998 Sir Michael Llwellyn Smith, Ionian Vision: Greece in Asia Minor 1919-1922, (Hurst & Co.)
jointly with
Paul Cartledge, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Ancient Greece, (Cambridge UP)
1997 Christian Habicht, Athens from Alexander to Antony, (Harvard UP)