Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year (2005-2010)

Information gathered from Goldman Sachs accessed 8/12/10 and ft.com accessed 10/30/09

August 9, 2010 - The longlist was announced today for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. The Award, which is in its sixth year, aims to identify the book providing the most compelling and enjoyable insight into modern business issues.

Shortlist announced mid-September.

2010 Longlist: (Shortlist marked with *)
Ian Bremmer. The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations?
John Cassidy. How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities
Patrick Dillon and Carl M. Cannon. Circle of Greed: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of the Lawyer Who Brought Corporate America to Its Knees
Fred Goodman. Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis
Adam Haslett. Union Atlantic: A Novel
*Sheena Iyengar. The Art of Choosing --Dad read this, looked boring...
Walter Kiechel. The Lords of Strategy: Secret Intellectual History of the New Corporate World
*David Kirkpatrick. The Facebook Effect: Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World
*Michael Lewis. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine
*Sebastian Mallaby. More Money than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite
Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera. All the Devils Are Here: Hidden History of the Financial Crisis
Hamish McRae. What Works: Success in Stressful Times
*Raghuram Rajan. Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy -- Winner!
Matt Ridley. The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves
*Andrew Ross Sorkin. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System – and Themselves
Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams. MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World

Previous Awards:
2009 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Biz Book of the Year
Liaquat Ahamed's Lords of Finance: 1929, The Great Depression, and the Bankers Who Broke the World

Award Winner, 2008
Mohamed El-Erian's book When Markets Collide

Award Winner, 2007
The Last Tycoons by William D Cohan

Award winner, 2006
James Kynge’s China Shakes the World

Award winner, 2005
Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat won the inaugural award in 2005

DSC Prize for South Asian Literature (2011)

The DSC Prize for South Asian Literature celebrates the rich and varied literature from, and connected to, the subcontinent. The prize will award US$ 50,000 to the winner starting from 2011. The award will recognize writers of any ethnicity writing about South Asia and its diasporas. The books competing for the prize must be an original work of fiction published during 1st April 2009 and 31st March 2010, written in English or translated into English.

The Longlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature comprises:

Upamanyu Chatterjee: Way To Go (Penguin),
Amit Chaudhuri: The Immortals --shortlist
Chandrahas Choudhury: Arzee the Dwarf (HarperCollins),
Musharraf Ali Farooqi: The Story of a Widow  --shortlist
Ru Freeman: A Disobedient Girl (Penguin/ Viking),
Anjum Hassan: Neti Neti (IndiaInk/ Roli Books),
Tania James: Atlas of Unknowns  --shortlist
Manju Kapur: The Immigrant  --shortlist
Daniyal Mueenuddin: In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (Bloomsbury),
Neel Mukherjee: A Life Apart  --shortlist
HM Naqvi: Home Boy  --shortlist
Salma: The Hour Past Midnight (Zubaan, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom),
Sankar: The Middleman (Penguin, translated by Arunava Sinha),
Ali Sethi: The Wish Maker (Penguin),
Jaspreet Singh: Chef (Bloomsbury),
Aatish Taseer: The Temple Goers

National Translation Award (1998-2010)

from alta: American Literary Translators Association, accessed 10/27/10

2010 Alex Zucker for his translation from the Czech of Petra Hůlová’s All This Belongs to Me
2009 Norman Shapiro for his translation from the French of French Women Poets of Nine Centuries
2008 Richard Wilbur for his translation of French dramatist Pierre Corneille’s The Theatre of Illusion
2007 Joel Agee for his translation of The Selected Writings of Friedrich Dürrenmatt
2006 Ellen Elias-Bursać for her translation of David Albahari’s Serbian novel Götz and Meyer
2005 Vincent Katz for his translation The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius
2004 Aron Aji for his translation of Bilge Karasu’s Turkish novel The Garden of Departed Cats
2003 Jo Anne Engelbert for her translation of Roberto Sosa’s Spanish poetryThe Return of the River
2002 E.H. and A.M. Blackmore for their translation of Selected Poems of Victor Hugo: A Bilingual Edition
2001 Danuta Borchardt for her translation of Witold Gombrowicz’s Polish novel Ferdydurke
2000 Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin for their translation of Chu T’ien-wen’s Chinese novel Notes of a Desolate Man
1999 Peter Constantine for his translation of Anton Chekhov’s The Undiscovered Chekhov: Thirty-Eight New Stories
1998 Carolyn Tipton for her translation of To Painting by Rafael Alberti

Cafe Libri Previous Reads List

2010

122. DECEMBER: Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver and Christmas Jars by Jason F. Wright
120. NOVEMBER: The Hunger Games (Hunger Games #1) by Suzanne Collins and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East by Sandy Tolan
119. OCTOBER: Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott
118. SEPTEMBER: The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley
117. AUGUST: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
116. JULY: Dear John by Nicholas Sparks
115. JUNE: Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
114. MAY: Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron (contributor Bret Witter)
113. APRIL: Peony in Love by Lisa See
112. MARCH: A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott
111. FEBRUARY: Diary of a Sex Fiend: Girl with a One Track Mind by Abby Lee
110. JANUARY: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) by David Cay Johnston

2009

108. DECEMBER: Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin and A War of Gifts: An Ender Story by Orson Scott Card
106. NOVEMBER: The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory and She Taught Me to Laugh Again by Thomas Brown
105. OCTOBER: Farm City by Novella Carpenter
104. SEPTEMBER: On the Road by Jack Kerouac
103. AUGUST: Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
102. JULY: Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric
101. JUNE: The Stone Raft by Jose Saramago
100. MAY: The Great Gatsby by by F. Scott Fitzgerald
99. APRIL: Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult
98. MARCH: Sundays at Tiffany's by James Patterson
97. FEBRUARY: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
95. JANUARY: Wicked by Gregory McGuire and Spring Moon by Betty Bao Lord
2008

94. DECEMBER: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
93. NOVEMBER: Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
91. OCTOBER: Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
89. SEPTEMBER: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen and The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
88. AUGUST: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
86. JULY: Two for the Dough (Stephanie Plum #2) by Janet Evanovich and The Zookeepers Wife by Diane Ackerman
85. JUNE: Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
83. MAY: Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austin
82. APRIL: Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
80. MARCH: Atonement by Ian McEwan and The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice
79. FEBRUARY: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
77. JANUARY: Visitors from Oz: The Wild Adventures of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman by Martin Gardner and The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
2007

76. DECEMBER: The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks
75. NOVEMBER: Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich
73. OCTOBER: Along Came a Spider by James Patterson and Vacation by Jeremy Shipp
72. SEPTEMBER: The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
71. AUGUST: Carpe Demon by Julie Kenner
70. JULY: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
68. JUNE: The First Wives Club by Olivia Goldsmith and Ireland by Frank Delaney
65. MAY: Dawn of Destiny by Lee Stephen and The Kite Runner by K. Hosseini and Lucky Man by Michael J. Fox
63. APRIL: One for the Money (A Stephanie Plum Novel) by Janet Evanovich and Sleeping with the Fishes by MaryJanice Davidson
61. MARCH: Chocolat by Joanne Harris and Anybody Out There by Marian Keyes
59. FEBRUARY: You Slay Me by Katie Macalister and Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
57. JANUARY: Strange Candy by Laurell K. Hamilton and Saturday Morning Omelettes by Kavita Khanna
2006

55.DECEMBER: The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn and The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom
53. NOVEMBER: Capable of Murder by Brian Kavanagh and Dandelions in a Jelly Jar by Traci Depree (Sequel to A Can of Peas)
51. OCTOBER: A Can of Peas by Traci Depree and Queen of the South by Arturo Perez-Reverte
49. SEPTEMBER: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See and The Samarai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyami
48. AUGUST (Re-read and new book): Men Bleed Too: A Compelling Story About One Man's Struggle to Help His Wife Fight Breast Cancer by Thomas Brown and The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (re-read)
46. JULY: Zorro by Isabelle Allende and 1984 by George Orwell
44. JUNE: Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins and Gulity Pleasures by Laurell K. Hamilton
42. MAY: The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown and Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
40. APRIL: The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell and Isolde: Queen of the Western Isle by Rosalind Miles
39. MARCH: Geisha, A Life by Mineko Iwasaki
38. FEBRUARY: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
37. JANUARY (Re-read and new book): Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling (re-read) and Socrates in Love by Kyoichi Katayama
2005

35. DECEMBER: The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice and The Modern Magi: A Christmas Novel by Carol Lynn Pearson
33. NOVEMBER: A Kiss Of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton and Some Enchanted Evening by Christina Dodd
32. OCTOBER: The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
31. SEPTEMBER: Silas Marner by George Eliot
30. AUGUST: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
JULY (Re-read): The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
29. JUNE: Mabel McKay: Weaving the Dream by Greg Sarris
FEBRUARY through May: No book of the month
28. JANUARY: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
2004

26. DECEMBER: A Christmas Visitor by Anne Perry and A Christmas Journey by Anne Perry
25. OCTOBER and NOVEMBER: The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
24. SEPTEMBER: The Time Traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger
AUGUST: No book of the month
23. JULY: The Great Pretender by Millenia Black
22. JUNE: The Duke and I by Julia Quinn
JANUARY through MAY: No book of the month
2003

AUGUST through DECEMBER: No book of the month
21. JULY: Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman
FEBRUARY through JUNE: No book of the month
20. JANUARY: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
2002

NOVEMBER and DECEMBER: No book of the month
19. OCTOBER: Dark Highlander by Karen Marie Moning
18. SEPTEMBER: The Courtship by Catherine Coulter
17. AUGUST: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
16. JULY: Reunion by Sharon Sala
15. MAY and JUNE: The Fellowhsip of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
14. APRIL: Vanish with the Rose by Barbara Michaels
13. MARCH: Until You by Judith McNaught
12. FEBRUARY: A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks.
11. JANUARY: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
2001

10. DECEMBER: The Summerhouse by Jude Deveraux
9. NOVEMBER: Envy by Sandra Brown
8. OCTOBER: Wild Magic by Tamora Pierce
7. SEPTEMBER: A Knight to Remember by Christina Dodd
6. AUGUST: The Ugly Duckling by Iris Johansen
5. JULY: Dream Man by Linda Howard
4. JUNE: A Certain Smile by Judith Michael
3. APRIL and MAY: Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Cruise
2. FEBRUARY and MARCH: Just A Kiss Away by Jill Barnet
1. JANUARY: Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara

ReLit Award (2009-10)

From The ReLit Awards/ Ideas, Not Money accessed 10/25/10

“The country’s [Canada] pre-eminent literary prize recognizing independent presses.”
-The Globe & Mail

ReLit Award for short fiction, poetry and novels, founded by Newfoundland author, Kenneth J. Harvey

2010 ReLit Shortlists
NOVEL
Away From Everywhere, Chad Pelley (Breakwater)
Wrong Bar, Nathaniel G. Moore (Tightrope)
Overqualified, Joey Comeau (ECW)
The Beautiful Children, Michael Kenyon (Thistledown) --Winner!
Holding Still For As Long As Possible, Zoe Whittall (Anansi)
The Plight House, Jason Hrivnak (Pedlar)
After the Red Night, Christiane Frenette (Cormorant)

POETRY
Lisa Robertson's Magenta Soul Whip, Lisa Robertson (Coach House)
A Nice Place to Visit, Sky Gilbert (ECW)
The Others Raisd in Me, Gregory Betts (Pedlar)
Always Die Before Your Mother, Patrick Woodcock (ECW)
Paper Radio, Damian Rogers (ECW)
Red Nest, Gillian Jerome (Nightwood) --Winner!
The Last House, Michael Kenyon (Brick)

SHORT FICTION
Men of Salt, Men of Earth, Matt Lennox (Oberon)
Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, Stuart Ross (Freehand) --Winner!
The Moon of Letting Go, Richard Van Camp (Enfield & Wizenty)
What Boys Like, Amy Jones (Biblioasis)
Fatted Calf Blues, Steven Mayoff (Turnstone)
What We’re Made Of, Ryan Turner (Oberon)
Sentimental Exorcisms, David Derry (Coach House)

2009 Shortlist for NOVEL
Girls Fall Down, Maggie Helwig (Coach House)
Cleavage, Theanna Bischoff (NeWest)
A Slice of Voice at the Edge of Hearing, Brian Dedora (Mercury)
Anna’s Shadow, David Manicom (Esplanade)
Shuck, Daniel Allen Cox (Arsenal Pulp)
Charlie Muskrat, Harold Johnson (Thistledown)
Chase & Haven, Michael Blouin (Coach House)

2009 Longlist for NOVEL

The Order of Good Cheer, Bill Gaston (Anansi)
1892, Paul Butler (Pennywell)
The Darren Effect, Libby Creelman (Goose Lane)
Ordinary Lives, Josef Skvorecky (Key Porter)
More, Austin Clarke (Thomas Allen)
Here After, Sean Costello (Your Scrivener Press)
Seaweed on the Rocks, Stanley Evans (Touchwood)
Angels of Maradona, Glen Carter (Breakwater)
Operation Rimbaud, Jacques Godbout (Cormorant)
Chef, Jaspreet Singh (Esplanade)
Quintet, Douglas Arthur Brown (Key Porter)
A Week of This, Nathan Whitlock (ECW)
The Year of Numbers, Paulina Wyrzykowski (Seraphim)
The Mountain Clinic, Harold Hoefle (Oberon)
Blasted, Kate Story (Killick)
The Frog Lake Massacre, Bill Gallaher (Touchwood)
The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis, Aaron Peck (Pedlar)
Skin Room, Sara Tilley (Pedlar)
Chase & Haven, Michael Blouin (Coach House)
Charlie Muskrat, Harold Johnson (Thistledown)
Shuck, Daniel Allen Cox (Arsenal Pulp)
Sailor Girl, Sheree-Lee Olson (Porcupine’s Quill)
The Reverend’s Apprentice, David N. Odhiambo (Arsenal Pulp)
Cockroach, Rawi Hage (Anansi)
The Seary Line, Nicole Lundrigan (Breakwater)
Stunt, Claudia Dey (Coach House)
Niceman Cometh, David Carpenter (Porcupine’s Quill)
Good to a Fault, Marina Endicott (Freehand)
Anna’s Shadow, David Manicom (Esplanade)
The Red Dress, Paul Nicholas Mason (Turnstone)
The Steve Machine, Mike Hoolboom (Coach House)
A Slice of Voice at the Edge of Hearing, Brian Dedora (Mercury)
Cleavage, Theanna Bischoff (NeWest)
In the Garden of Men, John Kupferschmidt (3-Day Books)
Girls Fall Down, Maggie Helwig (Coach House)
Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot, Nicole Markotic (Arsenal Pulp)
The Frankenstein Murders, Kathlyn Bradshaw (Cormorant)
The Entropy of Aaron Rosclatt, James Sandham (Clark-Nova)
Taking the Stairs, John Stiles (Nightwood)
Eva’s Threepenny Theatre, Andrew Steinmetz (Gaspereau)
The Show that Smells, Derek McCormack (ECW)
Entitlement, Jonathan Bennett (ECW)

Joshua Henkin's Novels About Writers, Writing, and the Writing Life

Joshua Henkin’s Ten Terrific Novels About Writers, Writing, and the Writing Life

from Conversational Reading, accessed 10/23/10

(Today we have a guest post from novelist Joshua Henkin. Henkin’s novel, Matrimony, about MFA students and writing about writing (among other things), is out in paperback.)

Opening Disclaimer: These are ordered randomly and not to be construed as a Top-Ten list or even as a Ten-Personal-Favorites list, just ten works of fiction I plain like and thought I’d share with you at Conversational Reading.

Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon. Often forgotten in the publishing hoopla surrounding Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Chabon was just out of college when MOP was published) and the attention he has gotten for his later novels are some finely wrought stories collected in A Model World, and The Wonder Boys, a high-wire comedic novel that takes place at a writing conference and is said to be based loosely on the life of Chuck Kinder, one of Chabon’s undergraduate writing professors. This is difficult material to mine afresh—making fun of writing conferences is both easy and familiar—and, in general, it’s hard to do farce without becoming, well, farcical. But Chabon does it. Some outrageous things happen, but Chabon’s language and narrative are always under his control.

The Information by Martin Amis. Amis is one of the writers I mention when my writing students complain about unlikable characters. Has Amis ever written a “likable” character? (Actually, I like a lot of Amis’s characters, but that’s another matter, and the whole question of likeability tends to be a red herring.) Although his work is uneven, the best of it is first-rate. I would include The Information in that category, a novel about literary success and failure, and about envy and backstabbing and other such things. On those occasions when I’m interviewed and asked what Matrimony is about (often by someone who hasn’t read the book: if they’d read it, they wouldn’t need to ask), I think of Amis’s protagonist, on book tour, who responds to one interviewer (I’m going on memory here) in the following way: “The book is what it is. All two hundred thousand words of it. If I could have said it in fewer words, I would have.”

Men in Black by Scott Spencer. Speaking of book tours, Spencer’s novel chronicles the personal and professional woes of Sam Holland, a literary novelist whose books don’t sell and who writes a pseudonymous book about UFOs that catapults him to literary stardom. Although the send-up of literary success is often amusing, what distinguishes Spencer’s book is less the material about the writing life than Spencer’s portrait of middle-aged-white-guy anxiety/crisis/desperation, a subject done so often it can be tiresome, but which Spencer does much better than most, certainly much better than a lot of writers who have gotten more attention than he has. (Another novel that does this really well, though not a book about writing, is Preston Falls by David Gates. Gates’s Jernigan is very good too, but I like Preston Falls better). Spencer may be best known for writing an apparently good book (I never read it) that got turned into such a terrible movie it cast a negative retroactive light on the book itself. I’m talking about Endless Love (a movie that, incidentally, marks Tom Cruise’s film debut), the 1981 picture starring sixteen-year-old Brooke Shields, a year after her soft porn performance opposite Christopher Atkins in Blue Lagoon. When I tried to reassure a writer friend of mine, anxious over the way the movie version of his book was turning out, that even a bad movie helps a book, he said, “Just as long as I don’t get Scott Spencered.”

“Family Furnishings” by Alice Munro. Not a novel, but there’s more packed into a forty-page Munro story than into most 400-page novels. Reading a Munro story is like peeling an onion and finding layer after layer beneath it: no story of hers is quite what it seems to be at first. At Brooklyn College’s MFA program, where I teach, the ten-or-so-member faculty was asked to make a list of ten works of fiction that were most influential to them, and Munro was on more lists than any other writer. “Family Furnishings,” like a number of recent Munro stories, chronicles the writing life and feels closer to home than some of Munro’s earlier work. It’s a stunning story. There’s a powerful and shocking moment in which the writer protagonist uses a character from her own life for the purposes of her fiction, to disastrous consequences. The story is also wonderful at depicting the pain that goes hand in hand with outgrowing your small-town roots, and your family along with it. For more on “Family Furnishings,” have a look at Lorrie Moore’s review of Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage in the New York Review of Books.

Atonement by Ian McEwan. Speaking of the New York Review of Books, John Banville, in his evisceration of Saturday, which he called “a dismayingly bad book,” also said that “the first half of Atonement alone [will] ensure [McEwan] a lasting place in English letters.” And the second half of the book isn’t too bad, either. Atonement was a great novel long before it got turned into a blockbuster move and thereby earned a spot on the reading list of every book club in the country, but this is a case where the commercial success is well deserved. My wife, a better (and certainly more-difficult-to-please) critic than I am (when she likes something I’ve written, I know I’m on safe ground), stayed up all night during our honeymoon in an un-air-conditioned hotel room in Ho Chi Minh City reading Atonement from cover to cover. I’d never seen her do that before, and I haven’t since. It’s impossible to know, of course, what books from today will be read a hundred years from now, or if people will be reading books at all, but if I were a betting man, I’d put my money on Atonement.

The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. Cunningham, who in his most recent novel Specimen Days has done for Walt Whitman (Specimen Days is divided into a ghost story, a thriller, and a post-apocalyptic tale, all presided over by the figure of Whitman) what he did for Virginia Woolf in The Hours, which won the Pulitzer in 1999. Essentially three novellas linked through the figure, life, and work of Virginia Woolf, The Hours does many things wonderfully, not least of which is the way Cunningham captures Woolf’s own struggles to find the right opening for Mrs. Dalloway. And his description of Woolf’s suicide is utterly haunting. I’ll never forget it.

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. After reading Matrimony, a number of critics and interviewers asked me whether I’d been influenced by Crossing to Safety. I hadn’t been consciously, but books have their way of worming themselves into your subconscious, so I went back and reread it, and, Sure enough. In a mere 350 pages, Stegner chronicles the life of two couples over the course of more than fifty years. It’s a book about the writing life and about academia, but also about friendship, and the ways success and failure can inflict damage on a person’s friendships. From a craft perspective, too, the novel is extremely interesting. Take a look at the way Stegner uses what I’d call a speculative/hypothetical point of view.

Starting Out in the Evening by Brian Morton. Morton has carved out a niche for himself, writing elegant, quiet novels about writers and the writing life. His prose is filled with feeling, and in his recent novel Breakable You he writes extremely powerfully about the despair surrounding a child’s illness. I admire all his books, and Starting Out in the Evening is probably my favorite. It was recently turned into a movie starring Frank Langella and Lili Taylor.

Blue Angel by Francine Prose. When I sat down to write the writing workshop scenes in Matrimony, I went back to the writing workshop scenes in Blue Angel, having remembered how vividly they were done. I got caught up in the book and reread the whole thing. It’s a wonderful, lacerating academic satire that skewers everything about academic and writing life, most especially P.C. culture. For another Francine Prose writing book, this one not a novel, read Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People who Love Books. It’s a high-level, sophisticated exploration of the way a writer reads, and, unbelievably, it found its way onto the New York Times Bestseller list. Or perhaps not so unbelievably: a recent USA Today poll revealed that 82 percent of Americans either have written or would like to write a book.

The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s novel, which is set in late-eighteenth-century Germany, is based on the life of a young philosophy student who will eventually become famous as the Romantic poet Novalis. It’s about a brilliant young man who falls in love with a dolt of a twelve-year-old girl, to the horror of his friends and family. To my mind, it’s a near-perfect book, and though it was clearly assiduously researched, Fitzgerald wears her knowledge lightly. The book won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1997 over finalists Underworld by Don Delillo, Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andre Makine, Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, and American Pastoral by Philip Roth. There were a few grumblings at the time (Underworld had been the favorite in some circles), revived more recently when someone (one of the judges? I can’t remember exactly) suggested that The Blue Flower had been a compromise choice and that a smaller, less ambitious novel had won out over a book that swung for the fences. No disrespect meant to Delillo or any of the others, but The Blue Flower, though it comes in at just over 200 pages, is neither small nor unambitious. Would people have said the same thing if the writer had been a man?

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)