THE NEWSLETTER OF THENo. IMPAC 15 February 2009 DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD FICTION MATTERS

Complete List of Eligible Titles 2009

www.impacdublinaward.ie Winner of the 2008 Award

Cllr. Eibhlin Byrne, Lord Mayor of Dublin and Patron of the Award, Rawi Hage, author of De Niro’s Game, at the announcement of the 2009 longlist the winner of the 2008 award. and introduction of the judging panel, November 2008.

L-R: Judges of the 2009 award, Timothy Taylor, Rachel Billington, James Ryan; Deirdre Ellis-King, Dublin City Librarian; Vesna Goldsworthy, Judge 2009; John Tierney, Dublin City Manager; Sinead Matthews, IMPAC; Judge Eugene Sullivan, non-voting Chairperson, at the launch of the 2009 award in the Dublin City Library & Archive, November 2008.

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary

Award is presented annually for a novel written

in English or translated into English. Trophy sponsored by Waterford Crystal Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon

Ms. Annie Garden, representing Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, France (right) attended the presentation dinner in Dublin, June 2008, courtesy of IMPAC. She is photographed here with Rawi Hage and Deirdre Ellis-King, Dublin City Librarian.

Congratulations to Winnipeg Public Library Nominators of De Niro’s Game

I felt De Niro’s Game was beautifully written with a pace and storyline that catches the reader on the first page and doesn’t let go. Rawi Hage’s direct prose is interspersed with poetic rants, musical cadences and powerful images that lament the madness and horror of war. Through the characters we see the indelible effect of unrelenting violence on the individual psyche; they can find no comfort or peace of mind without a gun in their hand. A cautionary tale.

Dear Award Office, As an English teacher, school librarian, and book lover, I am ecstatic to have just found your “Fiction Matters 2008” newsletter on-line. In the past, I’ve printed your long and short lists of Tannis Gretzinger, Head of Reader eligible books for personal use, classroom discussion, help selecting books as gifts, and discus- Services, Winnipeg Public Library, Canada sion with like-minded friends. Your newsletter is far superior to mere lists, providing further information regarding plot and author.

Please accept my heartfelt thanks for continuing to promote and champion reading, writing, and publishing in the English language. The impact of your award reverberates throughout the world for many years after each award is bestowed, since most of us scramble to try to read the entire list within a year, before the next list is released. Sincerely yours, Carla Cuming Sojonky Edmonton,Canada

Nominations are submitted by library systems in major cities throughout the world. The award is an initiative of Dublin City Council, the municipal government of Dublin, in partnership with IMPAC, a leading management productivity enhancement company, with the objective of promoting excellence in world literature. Eligible Titles 2009

The Lost Diary of Don Juan Gil Adamson’s acclaimed short fiction has The girls of Riyadh are young, attractive and Douglas Carlton Abrams been widely published in magazines and living by Saudi Arabia’s strict cultural tradi- Nominated by: literary journals, and her collection of stories tions. Well, not quite. In-between sneaking Veria Central Public Library, Greece received rave reviews. The Outlander, ten out behind their parents’ backs, dating, shop- years in the writing, is Gil Adamson’s first ping, watching American TV and having An editor receives a manuscript purporting novel. Adamson lives in Toronto, Canada. fun, they’re still trying to be good little to be the lost diary of history’s greatest lover, Muslim girls. That is, pleasing their families Don Juan. Don Juan grew up within the Lost City Radio and their men. Daniel Alarcón church but his ambitions towards the priest- Rajaa Alsanea grew up in Riyadh, Saudi hood fell to the wayside when he was seduced Nominated by: Arabia. She currently lives in Chicago where by a young nun. Evicted from the convent, Houston Public Library, USA she is a dental graduate student. She is he was taken under the wing of the liber- twenty-five years old andThe Girls of Riyadh tine Don Pedro. So began a life devoted to Ever since the civil war that took her husband is her first book. giving and receiving pleasure. Through his ended, Norma has been the voice of consola- connections with Don Pedro, he is made tion to a people broken by violence. Every Skylark Farm an ‘hidalgo’, an honorary nobleman, and is week, bereft families listen to her radio show Antonia Arslan protected from the wrath of the Inquisition as she reads out the names of the missing, Translated from the original Italian by by the King, but his position is precarious. with the hope of reuniting the few survivors Geoffrey Brock Then Don Juan embarks on the most perilous with their families. Successes are few; her adventure of all – he falls in love, and finds true gift is the offer of hope. Nominated by: that not only his reputation but also his life Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Although her face is unknown to her is in danger. Italy listeners, her name and spirit are celebrated Douglas Abrams is the coauthor on several by a wayward nation searching for a guiding A beautiful, wrenching debut chronicling books about love and sexuality. The Lost force. But her life is forever changed when the life of a family struggling for survival Diary of Don Juan is his first novel. a young boy from a jungle village enters her during the Armenian genocide in Turkey, in radio studio and provides a connection to the 1915. After forty years in Venice, Yerwant Call Me By Your Name husband she thought lost – the husband she is planning a long-awaited reunion with his André Aciman has not seen for ten years since departing for family at their homestead in the Anatolian Nominated by: the war. hills of Turkey. But as joyful preparations Chicago Public Library, USA Daniel Alarcón was born in Lima, Peru, in begin, Italy enters the Great War and closes 1977 and raised in Birmingham, Alabama. its borders. At the same time, in Turkey, the Call Me by Your Name is the story of a His collection of short stories, War By Young Turks, determined to rid their nation sudden and powerful romance that blossoms Candlelight, was published in 2005 to great of minorities, force his family on a brutal between an adolescent boy and a summer acclaim. march of hunger and humiliation. We follow guest at his parents’ cliffside mansion on the Yerwant’s relatives as they strain to stay alive Italian Riviera. During the restless summer Girls of Riyadh and as four children set out on a daring course weeks, unrelenting but buried currents of to reach Yerwant – and safety – in Italy. obsession, fascination, and desire intensify their passion as they test the charged ground Antonia Arslan, who lives in Padua, has a between them and verge toward the one degree in archaeology and was professor of thing both already fear they may never truly modern and contemporary Italian literature find again: total intimacy. André Aciman’s at the University of Padua. Skylark Farm is critically acclaimed debut novel is a frank, her first novel. unsentimental, heartrending elegy to human passion. Harpsong Rilla Askew André Aciman is the author of Out of Egypt Nominated by: and False Papers. He teaches comparative Oklahoma Department of Libraries, USA literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He lives with his Harlan Singer, a harmonica-playing trou- family in Manhattan. badour, shows up in the Thompson family’s yard one morning. He steals their hearts The Outlander with his music, and their daughter with his Gil Adamson charm. Soon he and his fourteen-year-old Nominated by: bride, Sharon, are on the road, two more Edmonton Public Library, Canada hobos of the Great Depression, hitchhiking Calgary Public Library, Canada and hopping freights across the Great Plains in search of an old man and the settlement Toronto Public Library, Canada of Harlan’s long-standing debt. Sharon’s growing doubts about her husband’s quest set In 1903 a mysterious, desperate young in motion events that turn Harlan Singer into woman flees alone across the west, one quick a hero while blinding her to the dark secret of step ahead of the law. She has just become his journey. A love story infused with history Rajaa Alsanea a widow by her own hand. Gil Adamson’s and folk tradition, Harpsong shows what Translated from the original Arabic by extraordinary novel opens in heart-pounding happened to the friends and neighbors Stein- Rajaa Alsanea and Marilyn Booth mid-flight and propels the reader through beck’s Joads left behind. a gripping road trip with a twist – the Nominated by: steely outlaw in this story is a grief-struck Rilla Askew is the award-winning author Warsaw Public Library, Poland nineteen-year-old woman. As the young of a collection of stories, Strange Business widow encounters characters of all stripes Gamrah’s faith in her new husband is not and two novels, The Mercy Seat and Fire in – unsavoury, wheedling, greedy, lascivious, exactly returned... Sadeem is a little too Beulah. She teaches creative writing at the self-reliant, and occasionally generous and willing to please her fiancé... Michelle is University of Oklahoma and lives in Okla- trustworthy – Adamson weds her brilliant half-American and the wrong class for her homa and New York. literary style to the gripping, moving, pica- boyfriend’s family... While Lamees works resque tale of one woman’s deliberate journey hard with little time for love. into the wild.

4 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009

The Theory of Clouds Ishq and Mushq obsession by Norman, a young man from the Stéphane Audeguy Priya Basil royal kitchens, the Queen comes to ques- Translated from the original French by Nominated by: tion the prescribed order of the world and Timothy Bent The Gambia National Library, Banjul loses patience with the routines of her role as monarch. Her new passion for reading Nominated by: initially alarms the palace staff and soon Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, France When Sarna Singh leaves the lustrous green hills of Uganda for England, streets leads to surprising and very funny conse- quences for the country at large. Akira Kumo, miraculous survivor of Hiro- of cramped old houses were not what she shima, reinvented himself as someone twenty was expecting. Husband Karam has been Alan Bennett is one of England’s leading years younger. Now an eccentric coutu- seduced by the historical feel of the city of dramatists. His work includes the Talking rier and collector of all literature having to London. Sarna, however, is convinced they Heads television series, and the stage plays do with clouds and meteorology, he hires have moved to England so he can visit his Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, A Ques- Virginie, a young librarian, to catalog his secret London lady friends. Sarna has a tion of Attribution, and The Madness of King library. While she works, he tells her stories secret of her own, but she is adept at hiding George III. of those who have devoted their lives to it. She impresses her English teacher with clouds. Sensual, hypnotic, and filled with her attempt at a cutglass accent, and copious Fieldwork stories both true and fanciful, The Theory of gifts of delicious food. Mischa Berlinski Clouds is a masterful first novel. But all the while, Sarna is tormented by Nominated by: Stéphane Audeguy lives in Paris, where he a mistake she made as a young woman in Boston Public Library, USA teaches the history of cinema and arts. India. When she receives a letter from home, her assumed equilibrium is shattered to the When his girlfriend takes a job in Thailand, Burma Boy skies.… Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, Biyi Bandele planning to enjoy himself and work as little Priya Basil was born in London in 1977. as possible. But one evening a fellow expa- Nominated by: She spent her childhood in Kenya and now triate tips him off to a story: a charismatic London’s Public Libraries, England divides her time between London and Berlin. American anthropologist, Martiya van der Ishq and Mushq is her first novel. Leun, has been found dead--a suicide--in It’s winter 1944 and the Second World War the Thai prison where she was serving a life is entering its most crucial stage. A few Matters of Honor sentence for murder. Curious at first, Mischa months ago Ali Banana was apprenticed to a Louis Begley is soon immersed in the details of her story. whip-wielding blacksmith in his rural home- Nominated by: This brilliant, haunting novel expands into a town; now he’s behind enemy lines, trekking Stadtbibliothek Bremen, Germany mystery set among the Thai hill tribes, whose through the Burmese jungle, a private in way of life became a battleground for the Thunder Brigade. He is fourteen years old. At Harvard in the early 1950s, three seem- missionaries and the scientists living among Burma Boy is a story of the adventure of war ingly mismatched freshmen are thrown them. together: Sam, who fears that his fine New and the terrible consequences of that adven- Mischa Berlinski was born in New York in ture. Biyi Bandele’s novel is a meticulously England name has been tarnished by his father’s drinking and his mother’s affairs; 1973. He studied classics at the University of researched, elegantly written tribute to the California at Berkeley and Columbia College Africans who fought in the Second World Archie, an affable army brat whose veneer of sophistication was acquired at an obscure and has worked as a journalist in Thailand. War – detailing the madness, the horror, Fieldwork is his first novel. the sacrifice and the dark humour of its most Scottish boarding school; and Henry, fiercely vicious battleground. intelligent but obstinate and unpolished, a refugee from Poland via a Brooklyn high Away Biyi Bandele is an award-winning novelist, school. Amy Bloom playwright and director. He was born in Nominated by: Kafanchan, Nigeria in 1967, the son of a Reserved and observant, Sam recounts the Milwaukee Public Library, USA veteran of the Burma campaign. He lives in trio’s Harvard years and the reckonings London. that follow: his own struggle with familial Away is the epic and intimate story of young demons and his rise as a novelist; a coars- Lillian Leyb, a dangerous innocent, an acci- Life Class ened Archie’s descent into drink; and, most dental heroine. When her family is destroyed Pat Barker attentively, Henry’s Faustian bargain and in a Russian pogrom, Lillian comes to then his mysterious disappearance just as America alone, determined to make her way Nominated by: all his wildest ambitions seem to have been Warsaw Public Library, Poland in a new land. When word comes that her realized. daughter, Sophie, might still be alive, Lillian Christchurch City Libraries, embarks on an odyssey that takes her from New Zealand Louis Begley lives in New York City. His previous novels are Wartime Lies, The the world of the Yiddish theatre on New York’s Lower East Side, to Seattle’s Jazz In the Spring of 1914 a group of students at Man Who Was Late, As Max Saw It, About District, and up to Alaska, along the fabled the Slade School of Art have gathered for Schimdt, Mistler’s Exit, Schmidt Delivered, Telegraph Trail toward Siberia. The quali- a life-drawing class. Paul Tarrant is easily and Shipwreck. ties readers love in Amy Bloom’s work – her distracted by an intriguing fellow student, humour, wit, elegant and irreverent language; Elinor Brooke, but when Kit Neville – already The Uncommon Reader her understanding of passion and the human a well-known painter – makes it clear that he Alan Bennett heart – come together in this novel. too, is attracted to Elinor, Paul withdraws Nominated by: into a passionate affair with an artist’s model. Multnomah County Library, Amy Bloom is the author of Come to Me, a As spring turns to summer, Paul and Elinor Portland, USA National Book Award finalist; A Blind Man each reach a crisis in their relationships until Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli/Biblioteca Can See How Much I Love You, Love Invents finally, they turn to each other. Paul’s new Nazionale “Vitt.Em.111”, Napoli, Italy Us; and Normal. She teaches creative writing life as a volunteer for the Belgian Red Cross at Yale University. is a world away from his days at the Slade. As When her corgis stray into a mobile library time passes, Paul must confront the fact that parked near Buckingham Palace, the Queen life, and love, will never be the same again. feels duty-bound to borrow a book. Discov- Pat Barker’s books include Union Street, ering the joy of reading widely (from J. R. Blow Your House Down, Liza’s England, Ackerley, Jean Genet, and Ivy Compton- The Man Who Wasn’t There, and the highly Burnett to the classics) and intelligently, acclaimed Regeneration trilogy. She is she finds that her view of the world changes married and lives in Durham dramatically. Abetted in her newfound

www.impacdublinaward.ie 5 Eligible Titles 2009

The Devil’s Footprints women, card sharps and casual violence, in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union John Burnside dingy poker dens and luxury villas. Then one Michael Chabon Nominated by: terrifying night Giorgio is forces to realise Nominated by: Aberdeen Library & Information Services, just how far he has left his past behind…. Liverpool Libraries & Information Scotland Gianrico Carofiglio is an anti-Mafia pros- Services, England ecutor living in Bari, South Italy. He began Toronto Public Library, Canada A chilling novel set against the untamed to write detective novels while dealing with a Kansas City Public Library, USA Scottish landscape. Michael Gardiner has midlife crisis, and his prize-winning Invol- lived in Coldhaven all his life yet still feels untary Witness and A Walk In The Dark Milwaukee Public Library, USA like an outsider. Married but distant from his became instant bestsellers in Italy and have Richmond Public Library, USA wife, he reads in the local paper that a school since been sold around the world. friend, Moira Birnie, has killed herself and Miami-Dade Public Library System, USA her two sons by setting their car on fire; The Time We Have Taken Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA but she has spared her 14-year-old daughter Steven Carroll San Francisco Public Library, USA Hazel. As teenagers, Michael and Moira Nominated by: had a brief romance, yet more troubling to For sixty years, Jewish refugees and their The National Library of Australia, Michael is the fact that he was responsible descendants have prospered in the Federal Canberra for the death of Moira’s brother. In the wake District of Sitka, a “temporary” safe haven of the tragedy, Michael becomes obsessed The State Library of New South Wales, created in the wake of revelations of the with Hazel, who is just old enough to be his Sydney, Australia Holocaust and the shocking 1948 collapse of daughter. the fledgling state of Israel. Now the District One summer morning in 1970, Peter van is set to revert to Alaskan control, and their John Burnside has written five works of Rijn, proprietor of the television and wireless dream is coming to an end: once again the fiction and eleven collections of poetry, shop, pronounces his Melbourne suburb one tides of history threaten to sweep them up including The Asylum Dance, which won the hundred years old. and carry them off into the unknown. 2000 Whitbread Poetry Award. His memoir A Lie About My Father, appeared in 2006 to That same morning, Rita is awakened by a But homicide detective Meyer Landsman great acclaim. dream of her husband’s snores, yet it is years of the District Police has enough problems since Vic moved north. Their son, Michael, without worrying about the upcoming Rever- Tales from the Town of Widows & has left for the city, and is entering the sion. His life is a shambles, his marriage a Chronicles from the Land of Men awkward terrain of first love. wreck, his career a disaster. And in the cheap James Cañón As the suburb prepares to celebrate progress, hotel where he has washed up, someone Nominated by: Michael’s friend Mulligan is commissioned has just committed a murder – right under Jafet Library – the American University of to paint a mural of the area’s history. But what Landsman’s nose. Beirut, Lebanon vision of the past will his painting reveal? Michael Chabon is the bestselling author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & In the small Colombian mountain village The Time We Have Taken is both a medita- Clay, which won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for of Mariquita, a band of guerrillas storms in tion on the rhythms of suburban life and a fiction. He lives in Berkeley, California, with to protest the country’s ruling government. luminous exploration of public and private his wife and children. They arrive with propaganda and guns, and reckoning during a time of radical change. when they depart they have forcibly recruited Steven Carroll was born in Melbourne. His Soucouyant all the town’s men, leaving behind only a novels The Art of the Engine Driver and The few. Gift of Speed were both shortlisted for the In their wake, Mariquita becomes a sinking Miles Franklin Award, which he was awarded wasteland filled with women who quickly in 2008 for The Time We Have Taken. resign themselves to food shortages, littered streets, and mourning. Without men, life is The Pirate’s Daughter hopeless, and getting along, nearly impos- Margaret Cezair-Thompson sible. But, Rosalba viuda de Patiño, wife of Nominated by: the former police sergeant, sees a different Jamaica Library Service, Kingston fate for the town of widows. Reluctantly, the women agree to join forces. A utopia emerges, Jamaica, 1946, Errol Flynn washes up on one that ironically resembles the ideal society the island in his storm-wrecked yacht. Ida the guerrilla group claims to promote. Joseph, the teenaged daughter of a Port Antonio Justice of the Peace, it intrigued to James Cañón was born and raised in learn that the “World’s Handsomest Man” is Colombia. He moved to New York to study on the island, and makes it her business to English. Cañón was awarded the 2001 meet him. Soon Flynn has made a home for Henfield Prize for Excellence in Fiction. He himself on Navy Island where he entertains lives in New York the cream of Hollywood – and Ida has set her heart on this charismatic older man. The Past is a Foreign Country Gianrico Carofiglio Ida’s child May, will meet her famous father Translated from the original Italian by only once. The Pirate’s Daughter is a tale of Howard Curtis passion and recklessness, of the two genera- tions of women and the battles for love and Nominated by: survival, and of a nation struggling to rise to Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze, the challenge of hard-won independence. David Chariandy Florence, Italy Margaret Cezair-Thompson was born and Nominated by: One hot summer, as world-weary blood- raised in Jamaica, West Indies. Her first Vancouver Public Library, Canada hound Lieutenant Chitti spends sleepless novel, the acclaimed The True History of nights hunting for the serial sex attacker Paradise, published in 1999. She is a professor A soucouyant is an evil spirit in Caribbean terrorising his city, trainee lawyer Giorgio of English at Wellesley College, and lives in folklore, and a symbol here of the distant and is befriended by dangerously charismatic Massachusetts. dimly remembered legacies that continue Francesco. Slowly the innocent Giougio to haunt the Americas. This extraordinary is lured into a corrupt world of beautiful first novel set in Ontario, focuses on a Cana-

6 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009 dian-born son who despairingly abandons Lars Saabye Christensen is one of Norway’s The Trout Opera his Caribbean-born mother suffering from leading contemporary writesr. He is the Matthew Condon dementia. author of 12 novels, as well as short stories Nominated by: and poetry. His international best-selling The son returns after two years to confront The State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, novel The Half Brother was published in Australia his mother but also a young woman who nearly 30 countries. now mysteriously occupies the house. In his desire to atone for his past and live anew, The Trout Opera is a stunning epic novel that The Rain Before it Falls encompasses twentieth-century Australia. It he is compelled to imagine his mother’s life Jonathan Coe before it all slips into darkness, her arrival in is the story of simple rabbiter and farmhand Canada during the early sixties, her child- Nominated by: Wilfred Lampe who, at the end of his long hood in Trinidad during World War II, and Biblioteca Municipal Central de Lisboa, life, is unwittingly swept up into an inter- her lurking secret that each have tried to Portugal national spectacle. On the way he discovers forget. Hoofdstedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek, a great-niece, the wild and troubled young Brussels, Belgium Aurora, whom he never knew existed, and David Chariandy lives in Vancouver. together they take an unlikely road trip that Soucouyant has received great attention, Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Gent, changes their lives. Wilfred, who has only including a Governor General’s Literary Belgium ever left Dalgety once in almost a hundred Award nomination for Fiction, a Gold Inde- Municipal Library of Thessaloniki, Greece years, comes face to face with contempo- pendent Publisher Award for Best Novel, and rary Australia, and Aurora, enmeshed in the the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. ‘What I want you to have, Imogen, above complex social problems of a modern nation, all, is a sense of your own history; a sense of is taught how to repair her damaged life. Burning Bright where you come from, and of the forces that Tracy Chevalier made you.’ Matthew Condon was born in Brisbane in 1962 and has lived in the UK, Germany and Nominated by: Rosamund lies dying in her remote Shrop- France. His books include, The Motorcycle Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona, shire home. But before she does so, she has Cafe, The Ancient Guild of Tycoons, A Night Spain one last task: to put on tape not just her own at the Pink Poodle and The Lulu Magnet. story but the story of the young blind girl, London 1792. The Kellaways move from her cousin’s granddaughter, who turned up familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a The Gum Thief mysteriously at her party all those years ago. Douglas Coupland cramped, unforgiving city. They are leaving This is a story of a Shropshire family in the Nominated by: behind a terrible loss, a blow that only a last half of the twentieth century, of genera- Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona, completely new life may soften. Against the tions and of the relationships within a family Spain backdrop of a city jittery over the increas- – and of what goes to make a child. ingly bloody French Revolution, a surprising bond forms between Jem, the youngest Kell- Jonathan Coe was born in Birmingham in In Douglas Coupland’s ingenious new novel away boy, and streetwise Londoner Maggie 1961. His novels include The Rotters’ Club, we meet Roger, a divorced, middle-aged Butterfield. Their friendship takes a dramatic The Accidental Woman, A Touch of Love, The “aisles associate” at a Staples outlet. And turn when they become entangled in the Dwarves of Death and What a Carve Up. then there’s Bethany, at the end of her Goth life of their neighbour, the printer, poet and phase, and young enough to be looking at radical, William Blake. He is a guiding spirit Diary of a Bad Year fifty more years of sorting the red pens from as Jem and Maggie navigate the unpredict- J. M. Coetzee the blue in Aisle Six. able, exhilarating passage from innocence Nominated by: When Bethany comes across Roger’s note- to experience. Their journey inspires one of Tweebronnen Openbare Bibliotheek, book she discovers that this old guy she’s Blake’s most entrancing works. Leuven, Belgium never considered as quite human is writing Tracy Chevalier grew up in Washington, Buchereien Wein, Vienna, Austria mock diary entries pretending to be her and spookily, he is getting her right. She also DC. and moved to England in 1984. She Hoofdstedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek, learns he has a tragedy in his past – and is the author of The Virgin Blue, Girl with a Brussels, Belgium Pearl Earring, Falling Angels and The Lady suddenly he no longer seems like just a paper- City of Johannesburg Library & and the Unicorn. stocking robot with a name tag. Information Services, South Africa The Gum Thief highlights Douglas Coup- The Model An eminent, aging Australian writer is land’s eye for the comedy, loneliness and Lars Saabye Christensen invited to contribute to a book entitled Strong strange comforts of contemporary life. Translated from the original Norwegian by Opinions. For him, troubled by Australia’s Douglas Coupland is the author of the inter- Don Bartlett. complicity in the wars in the Middle East, it national bestseller JPod, Hey Nostradamus!, is a chance to air some urgent concerns: how All Families Are Psychotic and Genera- Nominated by: should a citizen of a modern democracy react tion X. His books have been translated into Stavanger Bibliotek og Kulturhus, Norway to their state’s involvement in an immoral thirty-five languages and published in most war on terror? The Painter Peter Wihl – a celebrated success countries around the world. He lives and early in his career – is about to turn fifty. Then he encounters an alluring young works in Vancouver. The prospect is stifling his creativity and woman. He offers her work typing up his jeopardising his preparations for a major manuscript. Anya is not interested in politics, The Welsh Girl new exhibition intended to revive his repu- but the job will be a welcome distraction, as Peter Ho Davies tation. In a cruel twist of fate, his concerns will the writer’s evident attraction towards Nominated by: about his forthcoming birthday are rendered her. Her boyfriend, Alan, is an investment San José Public Library, USA consultant who understands the world in meaningless when he discovers that he has an LeRoy Collins Leon County Public harsh economic terms. Unsure about his incurable eye condition and will be completely Library, Tallahasse, USA blind within six months. What is a painter trophy girlfriend’s new pastime, Alan begins without his eyes? A chance encounter with to formulate a plan… Set in the stunning landscape of North an old classmate leads a vulnerable Peter into J M Coetzee’s work includes Waiting For Wales just after D-Day, Peter Ho Davies’s a sinister world which will haunt him for as The Barbarians, Life & Times of Michael K, profoundly moving first novel traces the long as he lives. The novel poses the question: Disgrace and most recently, Slow Man. He intersection of disparate lives in wartime. How far is the artist willing to go in pursuit was the first author to win the Booker Prize When a POW camp is established near her of his art? twice and was awarded the Nobel Prize for village, seventeen-year-old barmaid Esther Literature in 2003. Evans finds herself strangely drawn to the camp and its forlorn captives. She is exploring

www.impacdublinaward.ie 7 Eligible Titles 2009 the camp boundary when the astonishing and insight the Dominican-American expe- Vie Française occurs: Karsten, a young German corporal, rience, and the endless human capacity to Jean- Paul Dubois calls out to her from behind the fence. From persevere in the face of heartbreak and loss. Translated from the original French by that moment on, the two foster a secret rela- Linda Coverdale tionship that will ultimately put them both Junot Díaz’s fiction has appeared in The at risk. Meanwhile, another foreigner, the New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Best Nominated by: German-Jewish interrogator Rotherham, American Short Stories. The Brief Wondrous Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon, France travels to Wales to investigate Britain’s most Life of Oscar Wao is his first novel. Born in notorious Nazi prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In this the Dominican Republic, Díaz lives in New Meet Paul Blick: born in France, son of a car richly drawn and thought-provoking work, York City. dealer, provincial sociology student-cum- all will come to question where they belong theoretical revolutionary, briefly employed, and where their loyalties lie. The Maytrees married and soon to discover adultery and Annie Dillard other satisfactions of a desperate househus- Born in England, to Welsh and Chinese Nominated by: band as consort of a high-flying wife who parents in England, Peter Ho Davies is the Richmond Public Library, USA conquers the world as CEO of a Jacuzzi- author of two award-winning short story manufacturing company. collections The Ugliest House in the World Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek, Norway and Equal Love. The Welsh Girl is his first This not-so-extraordinary Frenchman is Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her novel. He lives in Ann Arbour. delivered to the awareness of having arrived bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachu- in middle age more a product of his times, setts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his his country, and blind chance than a creature Falling Man breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, Don DeLillo of his own free will. Jean-Paul Dubois gives an educated poet of thirty. As he courts us a man whose life reflects the story – the Nominated by: Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws mind and the heart – of a society coming Stadtbibliothek Leipzig, Germany him. Dillard traces the Maytrees’ decades of belatedly, poignantly, and often hilariously to Stadt-und Universitätsbibliothek Bern, loving and longing. They live cheaply among grips with the abiding pain and intermittent Switzerland the nonconformist artists and writers that beauty of what living has become. the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. Lou takes Laramie County Library System, Cheyenne, Jean-Paul Dubois was born in 1950 in USA up painting. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps Toulouse, where he still lives today. The Helsinki City Library, Finland care for him. But years later it is Deary who author of many novels and collections of causes the town to talk. In this moving novel, travel writing, he is also a reporter for A magnificent, essential work of fiction Dillard intimately depicts nature’s vastness LeNouvel Observateur. about the event that defines turn-of-the-21st and nearness. She presents willed bonds of century America, from the award-winning loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. García’s Heart author of White Noise, Libra and Under- Liam Durcan world. There is September 11 and then there Annie Dillard has written eleven books, Nominated by: are the days after, and finally the years. including the memoir of her parents, An Cape Breton Regional Library, Falling Man begins in the smoke and ash of American Childhood; the Northwest pioneer Sydney, Canada the burning towers and traces the aftermath epic The Living; and the nonfiction narrative of this global tremor in the intimate lives of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Dazzling new fiction writer Liam Durcan a few individuals. Theirs are lives choreo- blends his knowledge of the intricacies graphed by loss, grief and the enormous force Love and the Platypus of neuroscience with a literary ability for of history. Nicholas Drayson riveting, layered storytelling. In García’s Don DeLillo has won the National Book Nominated by: Heart, neurologist Patrick Lazerenko travels Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for The State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, to The Hague to witness the war crimes trial Fiction, and the Jerusalem Prize, along with Australia of his beloved mentor, Hernan García, a many other awards and honours. Honduran doctor accused of involvement in Which is the greater mystery: the breeding habits torture. Driven by his own youthful memo- The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar of the platypus or the workings of the human ries of the man and his family, Lazerenko Wao heart? In 1883 young British naturalist is determined to get to the truth behind Junot Díaz William Caldwell arrives in Australia with a the shocking accusations, even as the pros- mission: to determine for the scientific record ecution and a relentless journalist suspect Nominated by: whether platypuses really are egg-laying Patrick of hiding information. Taut, probing, Boston Public Library, USA mammals. He commences his investiga- highly intelligent, skillfully written, García’s Cleveland Public Library, USA tions and encounters the local Aboriginal Heart delves into the central issues of today, Houston Public Library, USA people, enlisting their help and ultimately from terrorism to bioethics, and the age-old learning their tragic history. He also meets dilemmas of loyalty and betrayal. New York Public Library, USA a young blind woman with many closely held Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA secrets of her own. Love and the Platypus is Liam Durcan is a neurologist at the Montreal Neurological Hospital. His first book, the Free Library of Philadelphia, USA a delightful, captivating novel that examines the obsessive nature of scientific enquiry short-story collection A Short Journey by Car Cork City Libraries, Ireland and its environmental consequences and the (Véhicule), was chosen as one of the Top 100 Books of 2004 by the Globe and Mail. Things have never been easy for Oscar, a wonders of nature and of romantic love. sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Nicholas Drayson is a novelist and natu- Ravel Dominican ghetto nerd. Oscar dreams of ralist. His first novel, Confessing a Murder, Jean Echenoz becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien was critically acclaimed in the UK and US. Translated from the original French by and of finding love. But he may never get what Born and raised in England, he now lives in Linda Coverdale he wants, thanks to the Fukœ-the curse that Australia. has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, Nominated by: dooming them to prison, torture, tragic acci- Galway County Library, Ireland dents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar Bibliothèque Municipale de Nice, France is just its most recent victim. Díaz immerses Münchner Stadtbibliothek, Germany us in the tumultuous life of Oscar and the history of the family at large, rendering with A bestseller in France, Ravel is a beguiling genuine warmth and dazzling energy, humour, and original evocation of the last ten years in the life of a musical genius, written by the acclaimed novelist Jean Echenoz, winner of

8 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009

the Prix Goncourt. The book opens in 1927 Justin Evans is a strategy and business devel- as Maurice Ravel – dandy, eccentric, and opment executive in New York City, where curmudgeon – voyages across the Atlantic he lives with his wife and their two children. aboard the luxurious ocean liner The France A Good and Happy Child is his first novel. to begin his triumphant grand tour across the United States. Knots Nuruddin Farah Illuminated by flashes of Echenoz’s char- acteristically sly humor, Ravel is not just Nominated by: a delightfully quirky portrait of a famous Stadt-und Universitätsbibliothek Bern, musician coping with the ups and downs of Switzerland his professional and personal life but a truly touching farewell to a dignified and lonely Called “one of the most sophisticated voices old man going reluctantly into the night. in modern fiction” (The New York Review of Books), Nuruddin Farah is widely recog- Jean Echenoz is the author of four previous nized as a literary genius. He proves it yet novels in English translation and is the again with Knots, the story of a woman who winner of numerous literary prizes, among returns to her roots and discovers much more them the Prix Medicis and the European than herself. Born in Somalia but raised Literature Jeopardy Prize. He lives in Paris. in North America, Cambara flees a failed marriage by travelling to Mogadishu. And The Ministry of Special Cases there, amid the devastation and brutality, she Nathan Englander finds that her most unlikely ambitions begin Nominated by: to seem possible. Conjuring the unforget- Edmonton Public Library, Canada table extremes of a fractured Muslim culture and the wayward Somali state through the San José Public Library, USA The Gathering is a novel about love and disappointment, about thwarted lust and eyes of a strong, compelling heroine, Knots is Denver Public Library, USA limitless desire, and how our fate is written another Farah masterwork. in the body, not in the stars. In the heart of Argentina’s Dirty War, Nurudin Farah is the author of nine novels, Kaddish Poznan struggles with a son who Anne Enright was born in Dublin. She has including From a Crooked Rib, Links and his won’t accept him; strives for a wife who published one collection of stories, The Port- Blood in the Sun trilogy: Maps, Gifts, and forever saves him; and spends his nights able Virgin, and three novels, The Wig My Secrets. Born in Baidoa, Somalia, he lives in protecting the good name of a community Father Wore, What Are You Like? and The Cape Town, South Africa, with his wife and that denies his existence. When the night- Pleasure of Eliza Lynch. The Gathering won their children. mare of the disappeared children brings the the Man Booker Prize 2007. Poznan family to its knees, they are thrust Mr. Allbones’ Ferrets into the unyielding corridors of the Ministry The Book of Words Fiona Farrell of Special Cases, the refuge of last resort. Jenny Erpenbeck Nominated by: Auckland City Libraries, New Zealand Nathan Englander’s first novel is a timeless Translated from the original German by story of fathers and sons. In a world turned Susan Bernofsky Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand upside down, where the past and the future, Nominated by: the nature of truth itself, all take shape Wojewódzka i Miejska Biblioteka A young man out poaching. A beautiful according to a corrupt government’s whims, Publiczna im Marszalka J.Pilsudskiego, maiden in a mysterious house. A perilous one man, one spectacularly hopeless man, Lódz, Poland voyage to distant islands. All the ingredients fights to overcome his history and his name. of a highly coloured Victorian romance are In The Book of Words, Jenny Erpenbeck played out in the context of the great colonial Nathan Englander’s short fiction has captures with amazing virtuosity the inner experiment. Walter Allbones really existed. appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New life of a young girl who survives the totali- So did his ferrets. From these facts, Fiona Yorker, and numerous anthologies, including tarian regime of a curiously unnamed South Farrell has spun a delicate, satirical fantasy The Best American Short Stories and The O. American country (most likely Argentina about human folly and the perils attendant Henry Prize Stories. He lives in New York during it “dirty war”). Raised by parents on disturbing the subtle balance of nature. City. whose real identity ends up shocking her, the girl comes of age in a country where gunshots Fiona Farrell was educated at Otago and The Gathering are mistaken for blown tires, innocent citi- Toronto where she graduated in drama. She Anne Enright zens are dragged off buses, and tortured and has published two collections of poetry, two disappeared friends and family return to visit collections of short stories and four novels, Nominated by: her from the dead. three of which have been short listed for the Stadtbücherei Frankfurt-am-Main, Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Germany Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Berlin in 1967. She has worked on opera and musical The Municipal Library of Prague, productions since 1991, and now lives in Engleby Czech Republic Berlin. Her books of fiction have been trans- Sebastian Faulks Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland lated worldwide. Nominated by: San Francisco Public Library, USA The State Library of South Australia, Adelaide San Diego Public Library, USA A Good and Happy Child Justin Evans Edinburgh City Libraries & Information Biblioteca Demonstrativa de Brasília, Services, Scotland Brazil Nominated by: Denver Public Library, USA Tampere City Library, Finland The nine surviving children of the Hegarty In the smart and suspenseful A Good and clan gather in Dublin for the wake of their Happy Child, a psychological thriller in When the novel opens in the 1970s, he is a wayward brother Liam. It wasn’t the drink the tradition of Donna Tartt’s The Secret university student, having survived a ‘tradi- that killed him – although that certainly History with shades of The Exorcist, a young tional’ school. A man devoid of scruple or helped – it was what happened to him as a man reexamines his childhood memories self-pity, Engleby provides a disarmingly boy in his grandmother’s house, in the winter of strange visions and erratic behaviour to frank account of English education. Yet of 1968. answer disturbing questions that continue to beneath the disturbing surface of his obser- haunt him and his new family. vations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power. One of his contemporaries unaccount- ably disappears, and as we follow Engleby’s

www.impacdublinaward.ie 9 Eligible Titles 2009

career, which brings us up to the present day, his debut novel is family at its strangest and A decision she makes on her eighteenth the reader has to ask: is he capable of telling best, coping with a business downturn in the birthday will affect the course of Ayodele’s the whole truth? Sebastian Faulks’s new novel time-honored way: through gossip, pranks, life. How will she choose? is a bolt from the blue, unlike anything he and increasingly frequent coffee breaks. With has written before: contemporary, demotic, a demon’s eye for the details that make life One path will send Ayodele to Europe, heart-wrenching – and funny, in the deepest worth noticing, Joshua Ferris tells a true and to university and to the pain of first love. shade of black. funny story about survival in life’s strangest Another will have her travel the globe after environment, the one we pretend is normal suffering an immeasurable loss. Yet another Sebastian Faulks is the author of A Trick five days a week. will keep her in Africa, a mother and wife in of Light, The Girl at the Lion D’Or, A Fool’s a polygamous marriage. In each of Ayodele’s Alphabet, The Fatal Englishman, Birdsong, Joshua Ferris lives with his wife in Brooklyn, possible futures, we see how the interplay of Charlotte Gray, On Green Dolphin Street where he is at work on his second novel. choice and fate determines the shape of our and Human Traces. lives. What part of us would be different World Without End if we had made other decisions? And what Edwin & Matilda Ken Follett part of us would stay the same? Reading the Laurence Fearnley Nominated by: Ceiling paints a compelling portrait of the Nominated by: LeRoy Collins Leon County Public modern African experience for women, and Wellington City Libraries, New Zealand Library, Tallahassee, USA introduces a stunning new voice to contem- porary fiction. Set if the southern South Island, Edwin & World Without End takes place in the same Dayo Forster was born in the Gambia and Matilda describes the unusual bond formed town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the now lives in Kenya. Reading the Ceiling is between sixty-two-year-old photographer townspeople finished building the exquisite her first novel. Edwin and twenty-two-year-old Matilda, Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of as their relationship grows in ways neither The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and Love Falls could possibly have predicted. I liked the look the priory are again at the center of a web Esther Freud of concentration on his face when we made love. of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition His hands moved gently over my body; it was as and revenge, but this sequel stands on its Nominated by: if he was turning the pages of some fragile book own. This time the men and women of an Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek Bonn, – the type of book that has tissue pages, like an extraordinary cast of characters find them- Germany old-fashioned Bible. He reminded me, too, of a selves at a crossroad of new ideas – about Christchurch City Libraries, New Zealand child learning to read. I pictured his fingertips medicine, commerce, architecture, and tracing the words on the page, his lips mouthing justice. In a world where proponents of the It is July, three months after Lara’s seven- the sounds, so intense was his focus. ‘Edwin,’ I old ways fiercely battle those with progres- teenth birthday, and a week before Charles teased, ‘am I a good book?’ sive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly and Diana’s Royal Wedding. When Lara’s reach a boiling point against the devastating father, a man she barely knows, invites her Laurence Fearnley is the author of six novels. backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to accompany him on holiday, she finds Based in Dunedin, she is currently working to strike the human race – the Black Death. herself far away from the fumes of London’s on the third book in her southern trilogy. Holloway Road in the sun-scorched hillsides Ken Follett is one of the world’s most of Tuscany. There she meets the Willoughby Spanish Fly popular novelists. He has sold approximately family, rife with illicit alliances and Will Ferguson 90 million books. He lives in Hertfordshire, vendettas. The more embroiled Lara becomes Nominated by: with his wife Barbara, in a rambling rectory with them, and with the carelessly beautiful Calgary Public Library, Canada with two Labrador retrievers, Custard and Kip, the more consumed she is with doubt, Bess. curiosity and dread. And so begins her intox- Raised by his father in the dying town of icating, troubled journey into self discovery Paradise Flats, Jack McGreary has learned to Reading the Ceiling and across the very fine line between child- live by his wits. The year is 1939. Drought has hood and what lies beyond … turned America’s heartland into a dust bowl, and the world is on the brink of war. Jack’s Esther Freud was born in London in 1963. father wants him to head north to Canada to She trained as an actress before writing her sign up in the fight against Fascism. But when first novel, Hideous Kinky, which was short- a pair of fast-talking swindlers named Virgil listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and and Miss Rose blow through town, Jack falls was made into a feature film starring Kate in with them instead. Together, they go on a Winslet. She has since written four other crime spree across the Southwest, staging a novels. Her books have been translated into series of inventive and often hilarious cons, thirteen languages. Her most recent novel while sexual tension between Jack and Miss was The Sea House. Rose grows ... Someone is being set up. Notes from an Exhibition Will Ferguson’s debut novel, Happiness, Patrick Gale has been published in thirty-three countries Nominated by: and twenty-six languages around the world. Katona József County Library, With his brother Ian, he wrote the wildly Kecskemét, Hungary successful humour book How to Be a Cana- dian. Will lives in Calgary with his wife and Chicago Public Library, USA their two young sons. Gateshead Libraries & Arts, England

Then We Came to the End When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies Joshua Ferris painting obsessively in her attic studio in Nominated by: Penzance, her saintly husband and adult chil- Kansas City Public Library, USA dren have more than the usual mess to clear up. She leaves behind an extraordinary and No one knows us quite the same way as Dayo Forster acclaimed body of work – but she also leaves the men and women who sit beside us in a legacy of secrets and emotional damage Nominated by: which will take months to unravel. The department meetings and crowd the office The Gambia National Library, Banjul refrigerator with their labeled yogurts. reader becomes a detective, piecing together Every office is a family of sorts, and the ad the clues of a life – as an artist, lover, mother, agency Joshua Ferris brilliantly depicts in wife and patient – which takes them from

10 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009 contemporary Penzance to 1960s Toronto Measuring Time A testament to the triumph of the individual to St Ives in the 1970s. What emerges is a Helon Habila in dire circumstances, and a novel of extraor- story of enduring love, and of a family which Nominated by: dinary imagination, range and emotional weathers tragedy, mental illness and the Goteborg Stadsbibliotek, Sweden complexity, The Carhullan Army has the intolerable strain of living with genius. visionary intensity and quality of great dysto- pian fiction. Patrick Gale was born on the Isle of Wight. In the small Nigerian village of Keti live He lives on a farm near Land’s End. His Mamo and LaMamo, twin sons of a domi- Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974 and most recent novels are A Sweet Obscurity and neering father. When one day the boys now lives and works there. Her first novel, Friendly Fire. try and escape the village, only LaMamo Haweswater, was published in 2002. Her succeeds – and in time becomes a soldier second, The Electric Michelangelo, was short- A Handbook to Luck well-versed in the ways of life and death. listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2004. Cristina García Mamo, too sickly to leave, remains in Keti Nominated by: finding solace in the arms of Zara while The Reluctant Fundamentalist Denver Public Library, USA watching impotently as his detested father Mohsin Hamid grows powerful and corrupt. Unable to wield Nominated by: In the late 60s, three teenagers from around a weapon, Mamo instead reaches for a pen Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek Bonn, the globe are making their way in the world: and soon begins to write the true history of Germany Enrique Florit, from Cuba, living in southern Keti and its people – all the time awaiting the Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Gent, California with his flamboyant magician return of his beloved brother, LaMamo... Belgium father; Marta Claros, getting by in the slums of San Salvador; Leila Rezvani, a well-to- Helon Habila was born in Nigeria. His first Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland do surgeon’s daughter in Tehran. We follow book, Waiting for an Angel received a 2003 Birmingham Libraries, England Commonwealth Writers Prize. He teaches them through the years, surviving war, disil- Stockholm Public Library, Sweden lusionment, and love, as their lives and paths creative writing at George Mason University, intersect. With its cast of vividly drawn char- Washington D. C. Tweebronnen Openbare Bibliotheek, acters, its graceful movement through time, Leuven, Belgium and the psychological shifts between child- Uprising Cleveland Public Library, USA Margaret Peterson Haddix hood and adulthood, A Handbook to Luck Cape Breton Regional Library, is a beautiful, elegiac, and deeply emotional Nominated by: Sydney, Canada novel by beloved storyteller Cristina García. Laramie County Library System, Cheyenne, USA At a café table in Lahore, a Pakistani man Cristina García born in Havana and grew up converses with a stranger. He begins the in New York City. Her first novel,Dreaming Bella, newly arrived in New York from Italy, tale that has brought him to this fateful in Cuban, was nominated for a National Book gets a job at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. meeting... Award and had been widely translated. There, along with hundreds of other immi- grants, she works long hours at a gruelling job Among the brightest of his graduating class Dante’s Ballad under terrible conditions. Yetta, a coworker at Princeton, Changez is snapped up by an Eduardo González Viaña from Russia, has been crusading for a union, elite firm and thrives in New York. His infat- Translated from the original Spanish by and when factory conditions worsen, she uation with fragile Erica promises entrée Susan Giersbach Rascón helps workers rise up in a strike. Wealthy into Manhattan society. For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Nominated by: Jane learns of the plight of the workers and his rise. But in the wake of September 11, he Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas of El becomes involved with their cause. finds his position in the city he loves over- Colegio de México, Mexico Bella and Yetta are at work – and Jane is turned, and his budding relationship with visiting the factory – on March 25, 1911, Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of “Remember that we’re in the U.S.,” Dante when a spark ignites some cloth and the Celestino is told when his daughter Emmita her past. Changez’s own identity is in seismic building is engulfed in fire, leading to one of shift as well, unearthing allegiances more runs away. Friends and neighbours warn him the worst workplace disasters ever. that in the United States it’s not considered fundamental than money, power, and even so unusual for a fifteen-year-old girl to run Margaret Peterson Haddix is the best- love. away. But Dante had counselled Emmita to selling author of many novels for young Mohsin Hamid grew up in Lahore, attended date only Spanish-speaking Hispanic boys, readers, including Because of Anya, Takeoffs Princeton University and Harvard Law and never anyone who joins gangs or deals and Landings, Turnabout, Just Ella, Leaving School and worked for several years as a drugs. Yet she ignores her father’s advice and Fishers, and The Shadow Children series. She management consultant in New York. His runs away with a tattooed Latino. And to lives in Columbus, Ohio. first novel,Moth Smoke, was published in ten complicate matters, Dante is in the U.S. ille- languages. gally, making it difficult to report the girl’s The Carhullan Army disappearance to the police. Sarah Hall The Camel Bookmobile In this bittersweet tour de force the First Nominated by: Masha Hamilton and Third Worlds join hands, and Mexican Gateshead Libraries & Arts, England Nominated by: pueblo life and Internet post-modernity Richland County Public Library, Columbia, dance together in one of the most memorable With much of the country now underwater, USA fables to shed light on issues such as immi- assets and weapons seized by the government gration, cultural assimilation, and the future – itself run by the sinister Authority – and The Camel Bookmobile is a fictional tale of of the United States with its ever-increasing war raging in South America and China, life an American librarian who leaves Brooklyn Latino population. in Britain is unrecognisable. to work for a relief organization in Africa that sends books on the backs of camels to Eduardo González Viaña was born in Peru In The Carhullan Army, Sister, as she is known, delivers her story from the confines forgotten villages. Her intentions are entirely in 1942. He is the author of several collections pure but, when the bookmobile causes a feud of short stories, four novels and two collec- of a prison cell. She tells of her attempts to escape this repressive world and her journey among the nomadic tribe it aims to help, she tions of essays. He teaches at the University realizes her good deeds may come with a of Oregon. to join the commune of women at Carhullan, a group living as ‘unofficials’ in a fortified high price. farm beyond the most remote Cumbrian The actual Camel Bookmobile made its first fells. run almost a decade ago. Three dromedaries trudged through arid northeastern Kenya to bring a library to settlements so remote

www.impacdublinaward.ie 11 Eligible Titles 2009

they had become nearly invisible. The Camel in a coffle – a string of slaves – for months to Travis Holland’s stories have appeared in Bookmobile captures a time and place that is the sea, Aminata is put to work on an indigo Glimmer Train, Five Points, and Ploughshares. unknown to many but relevant to all. plantation. She survives by using midwifery He is the recipient of two Hopwood Awards. skills learned at her mother’s side and by He lives in Michigan. The Archivist’s Story is Masha Hamilton is a journalist and the drawing on strength of character inherited his first novel. author of The Distance Between Us and from both parents. Eventually, she has the Staircase of a Thousand Steps. She lives with chance to register her name in the ‘Book of Slam her family in New York City. Negroe’s a historic British military ledger Nick Hornby allowing 3,000 Black Loyalists passage on Late Nights on Air Nominated by: ships sailing from Manhattan to Nova Scotia. Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf, Germany Elizabeth Hay Lawrence Hill has transformed a neglected Nominated by: corner of history into a brilliantly imagined Buchereien Wein, Vienna, Austria Edmonton Public Library, Canada and engaging piece of historical fiction. Just when everything is coming together for Winnipeg Public Library, Canada Lawrence Hill is the author of several novels Sam, his girlfriend Alicia drops a bomb- Ottawa Public Library, Canada and works of non-fiction, including Black shell. Make that ex-girlfriend – because by Berry, Sweet Juice, On Being Black and the time she tells him she’s pregnant, they’ve Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure White in Canada; Any Known Blood; and already called it quits. Sam does not want to in Toronto television, has returned to a small Some Great Thing. be a teenage dad. radio station in the Canadian North. There he falls in love with a voice on air, though There’s only one person Sam can turn to – The Quiet Girl his hero, skating legend Tony Hawk. Sam the real woman, Dido Paris, is even more Peter Høeg believes the answers to life’s hurdles can be than he imagined. Dido and Harry are part Translated from the original Danish by found in Hawk’s autobiography. But even of the cast of eccentric, beguiling characters Nadia Christensen who form an unlikely group of colleagues at Tony Hawk isn’t offering answers this time – the station. When four of them embark on a Nominated by: or is he? In this wonderfully witty, poignant canoe trip into the Arctic wilderness, tracing Richmond Public Library, USA story about a teenage boy unexpectedly thrust the last journey of the ill-fated Englishman Tampere City Library, Finland into fatherhood, it’s up to Sam to make the John Hornby, their lives are altered…. right decisions so the bad things that could Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark happen, well, don’t. Elizabeth Hay’s fiction includesA Student of Veria Central Public Library, Greece Weather, a finalist for The Giller Prize and the Nick Hornby is the author of the novels How Ottawa Book Award, Garbo Laughs, winner Kaspar Krone is a world-renowned circus to Be Good, High Fidelity, About a Boy, and of the Ottawa Book Award and a finalist for clown, and a man in some deep trouble. A Long Way Down, as well as the memoir the Governor General’s Award, and Small Drowning in gambling debt and wanted for Fever Pitch. He lives in North London. Change (stories). She lives in Ottawa. tax evasion, Krone is drafted into the service of a mysterious order of nuns who promise A Thousand Splendid Suns The Secret of Lost Things him reprieve in return for his help safe- Khaled Hosseini Sheridan Hay guarding a group of children with mystical Nominated by: Nominated by: abilities, abilities that Krone also shares. Katona József County Library, The State Library of Tasmania, When one of the children goes missing, Kecskémet, Hungary Hobart, Australia Krone sets off to find the young girl and Belfast Education & Library Board, bring her back, making a shocking series of Northern Ireland At eighteen, Rosemary arrives in New York discoveries along the way. The Quiet Girl is an exuberant philosophical thriller. Bibliothèques Municipales Geneva, from Tasmania with little more than her love Switzerland of books and an eagerness to explore the city Peter Høeg, born in 1957 in Denmark, Birmingham Libraries, England she’s read so much about. The moment she followed various callings – dancer, actor, steps into the Arcade bookstore, she knows sailor, fencer, and mountaineer – before Gateshead Libraries & Arts, England she has found a home. The gruff owner, turning seriously to writing. His work has Liverpool Libraries & Information Mr. Pike, gives her a job sorting through been published in thirty-three countries. Services, England huge piles of books and helping the rest of the staff – a group as odd and idiosyncratic London’s Public Libraries, England The Archivist’s Story Sheffield Libraries, as the characters in a Dickens novel. When Travis Holland the store manager’s eyesight begins to fail, Archives & Information Services, England Nominated by: Rosemary becomes his assistant. And so it Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona, New Hampshire State Library, is Rosemary who first reads the letter from Spain someone seeking to ‘place’ a lost manuscript Concord, USA Edinburgh City Libraries & Information by Herman Melville. Mentioned in Melville’s Services, Scotland personal correspondence but never published, Moscow, 1939. In the recesses of the infa- the work is of inestimable value. mous Lubyanka prison, a young archivist Hoofdstedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek, is sent to authenticate an unsigned story Brussels, Belgium Sheridan Hay was born in Tasmania. She confiscated from one of the many political Limerick City Library, Ireland worked in bookstores and in publishing for prisoners there. The writer is Isaac Babel. many years, she has published short stories. The great author of Red Cavalry is spending Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf, Germany The Secret of Lost Things is her first novel. his last days forbidden to write, his final Münchner Stadtbibliothek, manuscripts consigned to the archivist, Pavel Munich, Germany The Book of Negroes Dubrov, who will ultimately be charged National Library of Uganda, Lawrence Hill with destroying them. The emotional jolt of Kampala, Uganda meeting Babel face-to-face leads to a reckless Nominated by: Pikes Peak Library District, Halifax Regional Library, Canada decision: he will save the last stories of the author he reveres, whatever the cost. Colorado Spring, USA Ottawa Public Library, Canada Richland County Public Library, Columbia, Jamaica Library Service, Kingston From the margins of history, Travis Holland USA has woven a tale of the greatest power. The Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand When Aminata Diallo sits down to pen the Archivist’s Story is ultimately an enduring tribute to the written word. story of her life in London, England, at the A riveting and powerful story of an unfor- dawn of the nineteenth century, she has a giving time, an unlikely friendship and an world experience behind her. Abducted from indestructible love her village in West Africa and forced to walk

12 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009

Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Remembering the Bones Tree of Smoke Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades Frances Itani Denis Johnson later, a friendship grows between Mariam Nominated by: Nominated by: and a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the Vancouver Public Library, Canada Lincoln Library, Springfield, USA ties between mother and daughter. When the Milwaukee Public Library, USA Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate Georgina Danforth Witley shares her struggle against starvation, brutality and birthday – April 21, 1926 – with Queen Boston Public Library, USA fear. Yet love can move a person to act in Elizabeth II, a coincidence that has led to an unexpected ways, and lead them to overcome invitation to a special 80th birthday lunch at This is the story of Skip Sands – spy- the most daunting obstacles with a startling Buckingham Palace. But Georgie has a car in-training, engaged in Psychological heroism. accident on her way to the airport, and she Operations against the Vietcong – and the disasters that befall him thanks to his famous Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, now lies injured in a ravine not far from her own home. Desperately hopeful that someone uncle, a war hero known in intelligence circles Afghanistan and moved to the United States simply as the Colonel. This is also the story of in 1980. His first novel, The Kite Runner, will find her, she relies on her strength, her family memories, her no-nonsense wit and a the Houston brothers, Bill and James, young was an international bestseller, published in men who drift out of the Arizona desert into thirty-four countries. recitation of the names of the bones in her body- a long-forgotten exercise from child- a war in which the line between disinforma- tion and delusion has blurred away. In its Castorp hood that reminds her she is still very much alive. vision of human folly, and its gritty, sympa- Pawel Huelle thetic portraits of men and women desperate Translated from the original Polish by Frances Itani is the author of the award for an end to their loneliness, whether in sex Antonia Lloyd-Jones winning novel Deafening and the short story or death or by the grace of God, this is a story Nominated by: collection Poached Egg on Toast. She lives in like nothing in our literature. Ottawa. Wojewódzka i Miejska Biblioteka Tree of Smoke is Denis Johnson’s most grip- Publiczna im Marszalka J.Pilsudskiego, ping, beautiful, and powerful work to date. Lódz, Poland The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles Denis Johnson is the author of five novels, Picking up on a throwaway line in The Magic a collection of poetry and one book of Mountain, Castorp tells the story of Hans reportage. He lives in northern Idaho. Castorp’s student years in Gdansk, long before the adventures in Davos described in The Birthday Party Thomas Mann’s novel. Pawel Huelle skilfully Panos Karnezis creates a credible scenario for this influen- Nominated by: tial period in Hans Castorp’s development, The Municipal Library of Thessaloniki, imagining what happened when the rational Greece German student was exposed to the Slavonic eastern edge of the Prussian empire. It is the summer of 1975. An Onassis-like Castorp faithfully recreates the atmosphere of tycoon is nearing the end of his life. When central Europe as the storm began that would he finds out that his daughter, with whom lead to two world wars. Beautifully written, he’s having a problematic relationship, is full of humour, mystery and eccentricity, this pregnant by a man he does not approve of, is a moving tribute to a masterpiece of Euro- he has a birthday party for her on his private pean literature. island, secretly intending to persuade her to end the pregnancy: a doctor is standing by to Pawel Huelle was born in 1957. The author of perform the procedure on the spot. The novel Who Was David Weiser, Huelle is a novelist, intersperses the events that take place before, playwright and journalist. He has lived most during and after the party with flashbacks to of his life in Gdansk. the tycoon’s rise to wealth and fame, from his childhood in Asia Minor in the 1920s to old The Good Father age, via Buenos Aires, New York, London Marion Husband and Paris. Nominated by: Roy Jacobsen Panos Karnezis was born in Greece in Newcastle Libraries & Information 1967. He came to England in 1992 to study Service, England Translated from the original Norwegian by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw engineering, and worked in industry before starting to write. His first book, Little Infa- When Peter Wright’s father dies he leaves Nominated by: mies, was published in 2002. He lives in his entire fortune to Peter’s best friend Jack. Stavanger Bibliotek og Kulturhus, Norway London. Over a few weeks in the summer of 1959 the consequences of the old man’s legacy seri- 1939. A winter in Finland so deadly people Be Mine ously affect three men’s lives, Jack, who has called it the white hell. The inhabitants of a Laura Kasischke brought up his three children alone since his small town burn their cherished homes and, Nominated by: wife was killed, Wright’s solicitor Harry, with them, their history, as they flee invading Bibliothèques Municipales Geneva, who is trying to rebuild his relationship with Russian troops. But one man refuses to leave: Switzerland his estranged son Guy, and Peter himself, a simple woodsman with an extraordinary whose friendship with Jack is threatened by instinct for survival. Set against a land- On Valentine’s Day, Sherry finds an anony- his father’s death and the terrible secrets he scape of light and darkness, blazing fires and has kept since his return from the Japanese mous note in her mailbox: be mine. As the life-robbing cold, The Burnt-Out Town of notes continue, Sherry becomes more and POW camps. The Good Father explores the Miracles is a tale of cowards and unexpected nature of fatherhood and the bonds between more charged by the idea that she can inspire heroes, of powerful friendships, lives bound such feelings. Her marriage is routine and she fathers and their children in a gripping story together by war, where nothing matters more of love, betrayal and adultery. feels old, aimless, and empty, now her son is than finding the path back home. in college. She begins a wildly passionate Marion Husband is the author of The Boy I Roy Jacobsen is one of the most celebrated affair. Soon events spiral out of Sherry’s Love, Paper Moon and Say You Love Me. She and influential contemporary writers in control, threatening not only her marriage lives with her family in Tees Valley. Norway, with his ten novels, four collections but also her son and her home. This erotic of short stories, a biography and a children’s thriller explores how little we know ourselves book.

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and those we live with and what we risk when committed Christian she also wonders why film by Peter Weir and was nominated for we step away from our social personas and God has allowed slavery to happen. Beset by an Academy Award. He has twice won the allow passion to control our lives. her unruly characters and these questions, Miles Franklin award for fiction: for The she decides that she should take up a family Doubleman and Highways to a War. Laura Kasischke is the author of three contact to spend some time in Nigeria, previous novels and six collections of poetry. to experience her African origins at first The Butterfly Month She lives in Chelsea, Michigan. hand... Ariëlla Kornmehl Translated from the original Dutch by Faith The Widow and Her Hero Born in Guyana, Karen King-Aribisala Hunter Thomas Keneally is Professor of English in the department Nominated by: of English, University of Lagos. Her first Nominated by: M.I. Rudomino State Library for Foreign collection of short stories, Our Wife and Openbare Bibliotheek Eindhoven, Literature, Moscow, Russia Other Stories, won the Best First Book The Netherlands Prize in the Commonwealth Prize (African Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, It is some compensation for Grace Water- Region) 1990/91. The Netherlands house that her young husband Leo, executed Love Life Gemeentebibliotheek Utrecht, by the Japanese a month before the end of The Netherlands the Second World War, died bravely for a Ray Kluun Translated from the original Dutch by just cause. But in the subsequent decades Betrayed by her parents, her lover, and her Shaun Whiteside of peace, the true story of his last, daring own body, Joni, a young doctor, leaves her mission slowly emerges. For Grace, each Nominated by: home in the Netherlands for a rural hospital revelation feels like a fresh wound. Unable Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, in post-apartheid South Africa. There she to forgive those responsible, she is forced to The Netherlands lives a life of self-imposed exile, dominated reassess Leo’s self sacrifice and to question and deadened by the daily stream of medical the heroic impulse that drove him to it. Dan and Carmen have it all. They are emergencies confronting her, the inadequa- Thomas Keneally began his writing career young, rich, good-looking, satisfied in their cies of the system she works in, and the in 1964 and has published twenty-five novels work and love life, and are the parents of a loneliness of her empty domestic existence. since. They includeSchindler’s Ark, winner of beautiful three-year-old daughter. When Apart from a few brief erotic encounters, she the Booker prize 1982, The Chant of Jimmie Carmen is diagnosed with breast cancer, is able to keep the world at a distance. Dan is unable to cope with her illness and Blacksmith, Confederates and Gossip from the Gradually, though, the lives of Joni’s Zulu Forest. the changes this brings to their happy, yuppie family life. While the beautiful and housemaid, Zanele, and Zanele’s two chil- optimistic Carmen submits to chemotherapy dren begin to intrude on her isolation. As Day they forge a personal link with her, so the A.L. Kennedy and eventually a mastectomy, hedonistic Dan tries to find solace with his buddies and in spirits of Africa penetrate Joni’s life and begin Nominated by: several flings before he finally stops running to erode its sense of controlled precision. Glasgow Libraries Information & away and succeeds in supporting Carmen in Learning, Scotland Born in Amsterdam in 1975, Ariëlla Korn- her decision to end her life with dignity. Love mehl studied philosophy at the University Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek, Norway Life is an account of a terminal illness that is of Amsterdam. The Butterfly Month is Stadtbibliothek Leipzig, Germany devoid of glitz or fake sentiment. Completely her second novel. Ms Kornmehl lives in unapologetic it is a controversial but ulti- The State Library of Queensland, Brisbane, Amsterdam with her husband and two mately uplifting and life-affirming book. Australia daughters. After Ray Kluun’s wife was diagnosed with Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil he breast cancer and died in 2001, he began The Mire found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in writing Love Life, which is modeled on Krassin Krastev a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark his own experiences. Kluun now lives in Translated from the original Bulgarian by fellowship of his crew, and – most extraor- Amsterdam and has just published a follow- Nedyalka Chakalova. dinary of all – he found Joyce, a woman to up novel, The Widower. Nominated by: love. But that’s all gone now – the war took it The National Library “St. St. Cyril & away. Maybe it took him, too. Now in 1949, The Memory Room Methodius, Sofia, Bulgaria employed as an extra in a war film that echoes Christopher Koch his real experience, Day begins to recall what Nominated by: The Mire is a novel that is a dissection he would rather forget... The State Library of Tasmania, of a cruel and ugly period: the time of the A. L. Kennedy has published three previous Hobart, Australia so-called socialist society, which people novels, two books of non-fiction, and three living in the eastern part of the world will collections of stories, most recently Indelible ‘What is a spy? Are they born, or are they long remember for its profound and total lack Acts in 2002. She lives in Glasgow. made?’ With these words, Vincent Austin of moral values. The Mire is a shattering real analyses his future occupation. Some spies story that took place in a world governed by a The Hangman’s Game are made, he says, but his kind is born. senseless and evil ideology depriving man of Karen King-Aribisala Vincent is orphaned early, and his boyhood his right to free choice. is spent with an elderly aunt. His fascination Nominated by: Krassin Krastev was born in Bulgaria, with secrecy and espionage is shared to an The National Library Service of Barbados, in 1950. Author of the novelette Quick- uncanny degree by Erika Lange, daughter of Bridgetown sand (1986) which has been translated into a post-World War German immigrant. She Russian and Portuguese, he is owner and too has lost her mother, and she and Vincent A young Guyanese woman sets out to manager of the oldest publishing house in see themselves as twin spirits, inhabiting a write an historical novel based on the 1823 Bulgaria: Hristo Botev. Demerara Slave Rebellion and the fate of shared, platonic world of fantasy and ritual. an English missionary who is condemned The Memory Room is both a psychological to hang for his alleged part in the uprising. study of a brilliant but eccentric secret intel- But the characters she invents make an alto- ligence operative and an exploration of the gether messier intrusion into her life with mystical nature of secrecy itself, and of the their conflicting interests and ambivalent consequences of a shared obsession. motivations. As an African-Guyanese in a country where a Black ruling elite oppresses Christopher Koch was born and educated the population, she begins to wonder what in Tasmania. One of his novels, The Year lay behind her ‘ancestral enslavement’. As a of Living Dangerously, was made into a

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The President’s Last Love Some of his Cambridge colleagues dismiss The Bad Girl Andrey Kurkov the letter as a hoax, but Hardy becomes Mario Vargas Llosa Translated from the original Russian by convinced that the Indian clerk who has Translated from the Spanish by Edith George Bird written it – Srinivasa Ramanujan – deserves Grossman to be taken seriously. Nominated by: Nominated by: Helsinki City Library, Finland Based on the remarkable true story of the Veria Central Public Library, Greece strange and ultimately tragic relationship Miami-Dade Public Library System, USA Moscow, 2013. Bunin, the Ukrainian Presi- between an esteemed British mathematician dent, has joined other heads of state in an and an unknown – and unschooled – math- Biblioteca Demonstrativa de Brasília, open air swimming pool to drink vodka ematical genius. Brazil and celebrate with Putin. During his rise to Galway County Library, Ireland power Bunin has juggled with formidable and David Leavitt is the author of several novels eccentric political and personal challenges. including The Lost Language of Cranes, three Ricardo Somocurcio is in love with a bad His troubles with his family and his women story collections and, most recently, Florence, girl. He loves her as a teenager known as combine with his difficulties with corrupt A Delicate Case, from Bloomsbury’s series “Lily” in Lima in 1950, when she arrives one businessmen and demanding international The Writer and the City. summer out of the blue. He loves her next in allies, but it is his recent heart transplant that Paris, where she appears as the enchanting worries him most. Since the operation he The Cleft “Comrade Arlette,” an activist en route to has started to develop freckles, and his heart Doris Lessing Cuba, and becomes his lover, albeit an icy, donor’s mysterious widow seems to have Nominated by: remote one who denies knowing anything moved in with him… Spanning forty years, Jafet Library - The American University of about the Lily of years gone by. Wherever The President’s Last Love is a hilarious satire Beirut, Lebanon the bad girl turns up, Ricardo is doomed to on love, lies and life before and after the Iron The Regional Library of Karviná, Karviná- worship her. The protean Lily, gifted liar and Curtain. Mizerov, Czech Republic irresistible, maddening muse – does Ricardo ever know who she really is? The answer is Andrey Kurkov, born in St Petersburg in In the last years of his life, a Roman senator as unclear as what has become of Ricardo 1961, now lives in Kiev. He worked as a jour- embarks on one last epic endeavor: to retell himself, a lifelong expatriate shadowed by nalist and a film cameraman before starting the history of human creation and reveal the the sense that he is only ever drifting. to write. He has written screenplays and is little-known story of the Clefts, an ancient the author of critically acclaimed and popular Mario Vargas Llosa is the author of eight community of women. The Clefts have neither novels. novels, most recently The Way to Paradise need nor knowledge of men; childbirth is and was the recipient of the PEN/Nabokov controlled through the cycles of the moon, Award in 2002. He lives in London. The Indian Clerk and they bear only female children. But with the unheralded birth of a strange new child Where White Horses Gallop – a boy – the harmony of their community is Beatrice MacNeil suddenly thrown into jeopardy. Nominated by: Doris Lessing confronts the themes that Halifax Regional Library, Canada inspired her early writing: how men and women manage to live side by side in the In the white-shingled houses of Beinn Barra, world and how the troublesome particulars of young men shine their shoes and young girls gender affect every aspect of our existence. curl their hair. It’s Saturday night, there’s a dance in the parish hall. They come from all Doris Lessing was born in 1919. The Grass over Cape Breton to hear “Strings” Doucet Is Singing, her first novel, was published in play the fiddle. But it is 1939. England has 1950, and she has since gone on to publish declared war on Germany. Canada will more than fifty books. She has received march beside the mother country. Three numerous awards including the Nobel Prize. friends enlist in the legendary Cape Breton Highlanders: fisherman Hector MacDonald, Consequences gifted musician Benny Doucet, and Calum Penelope Lively MacPherson, who has been accepted at Nominated by: Dalhousie to study medicine. The three San Francisco Public Library, USA friends sail off to war in November 1941.

“One of the most accomplished writers of Where White Horses Gallop is a haunting tale fiction of our day” (The Washington Post) of a war where emotional shrapnel riddles the follows the lives and loves of three women – spirit long after the guns a continent away Lorna, Molly, and Ruth – from World War have grown silent. II–era London to the close of the century. Beatrice MacNeil is a playwright and the David Leavitt Told in Lively’s incomparable prose, this author of the bestselling novel Butter- Nominated by: is a powerful story of growth, death, and flies Dance in the Dark, and the short story Jafet Library- the American University of renewal, as well as a penetrating look at how collection There is a Mouse in the House of Beirut, Lebanon the major and minor events of the twentieth Miss Crouse. She lives in Cape Breton, Nova century changed lives. By chronicling the Scotia. San Diego Public Library, USA choices and consequences that comprise one The State Library of South Australia, family’s history, Lively offers an intimate Quarter Tones Adelaide and profound reaffirmation of the force of Susan Mann connection between generations. On a January morning in 1913, G. H. Hardy Nominated by: – eccentric, charismatic and, at thirty-seven, Penelope Lively is the author of many prize- The City of Johannesburg Library & already considered the greatest British winning novels, including Moon Tiger which Information Services, South Africa mathematician of his age – receives a myste- won the 1987 Booker Prize. She is also a rious envelope covered with Indian stamps. popular writer for children. She lives in When Anna returns to the ramshackle Inside he finds a rambling letter from a self- Oxfordshire and London. cottage of her youth in the seaside village of professed mathematical genius who claims to Noordhoek, near Cape Town, she does so be on the brink of solving the most important with the intention of sorting out her father’s unsolved mathematical problem of his time. affairs. It soon becomes clear that more is at stake. After a decade in London, where she

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has failed to find work as a musician, her Ian McEwan is the author of two collections find a job that will allow him to continue return to South Africa puts further distance of stories and ten previous novels, including fooling them. Soon after his arrival back into an already-strained marriage. Quick to Enduring Love, Amsterdam, for which he home in Soweto he meets up with a Nigerian welcome her is her neighbour, Franz van der won the Booker Prize in 1998, Atonement guy named Yomi who promises to help him Veer an architect searching for redemption. and Saturday. solve all his problems. What should Bafana Against a tangle of childhood memories, do? Should he bite the bullet and confess the scarred histories and renewed hope, Anna The Beautiful Things that Heaven truth to his mother and uncle, or should he finally starts to confront the death of Sam, Bears rather take up Yomi’s suggestion to buy a law her Irish luthier father and with it, questions Dinaw Mengestu degree and start practicing as an attorney? of guilt and belonging. Nominated by: A piercingly funny yet poignant novel by the Susan Mann was born in Durban in 1967. The National Library of Uganda, Kampala author of Dog Eat Dog. She has worked in the media and taught at New Hampshire State Library, the University of Cape Town. She is currently Concord, USA Niq Mhlongo was born in 1973 in Soweto. doing research in France. He has a BA from the University of the The Public Library of Cincinnati & Witwatersrand, with majors in African Hamilton County, USA Drybread Literature and Political Studies. His first Owen Marshall novel, Dog Eat Dog, was published by Kwela Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled in 2004. Nominated by: the Ethiopian Revolution after witnessing Wellington City Libraries, New Zealand soldiers beat his father to the point of certain Landscape of Farewell death. Now he runs a store in a poor African- Alex Miller A graveyard is all that’s left of the remote American neighbourhood in Washington, Central Otago settlement of Drybread, D.C. His only companions are two fellow Nominated by: where miners, often hungry and disap- African immigrants who share his feelings of The National Library of Australia, pointed, once searched for gold. It is to an old frustration with and bitter nostalgia for their Canberra cottage nearby that Penny Maine-King flees home continent. Soon Sepha’s neighborhood The State Library of New South Wales, with her young son, defying a Californian begins to change. Hope comes in the form of Sydney, Australia court order awarding custody of the child to new neighbours – Judith and Naomi, a white her estranged husband. And seeking her in woman and her biracial daughter-who become Landscape of Farewell is the story of Max this austere, burnt country is journalist Theo his friends and remind him of what having a Otto, an elderly German academic. After the Esler. He is after a story, but he discovers family is like for the first time in years. But death of his much-loved wife, Max believes something far more personal and significant. then the neighbourhood’s newfound calm his life is all but over. Everything changes Drybread, Owen Marshall’s third novel, is a is disturbed by a series of racial incidents. when his valedictory lecture is challenged moving study of love and disappointment, of Sepha may lose everything again. by Professor Vita McLelland, a feisty young the harm we do to each other, knowingly and Australian Aboriginal academic visiting unknowingly, of the power and significance Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Germany. Their meeting and growing of landscape in our lives. Ethiopia, in 1978. In 1980, he immigrated to friendship sets Max on a journey that would the United States. The Beautiful Things That have seemed unthinkable just a few short Award winning novelist, short-story writer Heaven Bears is his first novel. weeks earlier. When, at Vita’s invitation, and poet, Owen Marshall has written or Max travels to Australia, he forms a deep edited twenty-one books to date. Born in Breakfast with Buddha friendship with her uncle, Aboriginal elder 1941, he has spent almost all his life in South Roland Merullo Dougald Gnapun. It is a friendship that not Island towns, and has an affinity with provin- Nominated by: only gives new meaning and purpose to Max, cial New Zealand. Richland County Public Library, Columbia, but which teaches him the profound impor- USA tance of truth-telling in reconciliation with On Chesil Beach his own and his country’s past. Ian McEwan When his sister tricks him into taking her Nominated by: guru on a trip to their childhood home, Otto Alex Miller is one of Australia’s best loved Stadtbücherei Frankfurt-am-Main, Ringling, a confirmed sceptic, is not amused. writers. He is twice winner of the prestigious Germany Six days on the road with an enigmatic holy Miles Franklin Literary Award, Australia’s premier literary prize, for The Ancestor Game, London’s Public Libraries, England man who answers every question with a riddle is not what he’d planned. In an effort and Journey to the Stone Country. The National Library of Estonia, Tallin to westernize his passenger – and amuse The Association of Public Libraries The himself – he decides to show the monk some Feelings Expiry Date Hague, The Netherlands “American fun” along the way. From a choc- Yodanka Mineva olate factory in Hershey to a bowling alley in Translated form the original Bulgarian by The Municipal Library of Prague, Irina Cherkelova Czech Republic South Bend, from a Cubs game at Wrigley field to his family farm near Bismarck, Otto Nominated by: Regional Library of Karviná, is given the remarkable opportunity to see Karviná-Mizerov, Czech Republic The National Library “St. St. Cyril & his world – and more important, his life – Methodius”, Sofia, Bulgaria Biblioteca Municipal Central de Lisboa, through someone else’s eyes. Portugal Roland Merullo, is the acclaimed author Set against the backdrop of Sofia, in the Vancouver Public Library, Canada of seven books, including the Revere Beach 1970s and 80s, the Bulgarian narrator gives Lincoln City Libraries, Nebraska, USA Trilogy, and Golfing with God, a novel an account of her relationships with men over a twenty year period. From Theo- Free Library of Philadelphia, USA about a man’s unexpected spiritual journey. He lives with his wife and two daughters in dore the married love of her life to various briefer affairs, some running in tandem. The It is June 1962. In a hotel on the Dorset coast, Massachusetts author takes a sociological perspective on overlooking Chesil Beach, Edward and Flor- male / female relationships and hopes that ence, who got married that morning, are After Tears other Bulgarian women will see themselves sitting down to dinner in their room. Neither Niq Mhlongo reflected in it. is entirely able to suppress their anxieties Nominated by: about the wedding night to come… On Cape Town Central Library, South Africa Yordanka Mineva is the writer name of Chesil Beach is another masterwork from Boryana Hristovna. Feelings Expiry date is Ian McEwan – a story about how the entire Bafana is a young man with a weight on his her first novel. course of a life can be changed by a gesture shoulders. After flunking his law studies not made or a word not spoken. at UCT, he now has to find a way to either admit the truth to his family, or somehow

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After Dark The Dinner Club The Gravedigger’s Daughter Haruki Murakami Saskia Noort Joyce Carol Oates Translated from the original Japanese by Jay Translated from the original Dutch by Paul Nominated by: Rubin Vincent Laramie County Library System, Cheyenne, Nominated by: Nominated by: USA Helsinki City Library, Finland Openbare Bibliotheek Eindhoven, Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand Wojewódzka i Miejska Biblioteka Publicz, The Netherlands Lódz, Poland Gemeentebibliotheek Rotterdam, Fleeing Nazi Germany in 1936, the Schwarts The Netherlands immigrate to a small town in upstate New Dublin City Public Libraries, Ireland York. Here the father – a former high school Gemeentebibliotheek Utrecht, teacher – is demeaned by the only job he can The midnight hour approaches in an almost The Netherlands get: gravedigger and cemetery caretaker. empty all-night diner. Mari sips her coffee When local prejudice and the family’s own and glances up from a book as a young man, A subversive concoction of greed, lust, and emotional frailty give rise to an unthinkable a musician, intrudes on her solitude. Both violence set in genteel suburbia. When Evert tragedy, the gravedigger’s daughter, Rebecca have missed the last train home. They realise dies in his burning villa, everything points heads out into America. Embarking upon they’ve been acquainted through Eri, Mari’s to suicide. The other members of the “dinner an extraordinary odyssey of erotic risk and beautiful sister. Shortly afterwards Mari will club”, a group of five women who meet ingenious self-invention, she seeks renewal, be interrupted a second time by a girl from regularly and whose husbands do business redemption, and peace – on the road to the Alphaville Hotel; a Chinese prostitute together, rally around to support Babette, his a bittersweet and distinctly “American” has been hurt by a client, the girl has heard grieving widow. But events soon spiral out of triumph Mari speaks fluent Chinese and requests her control. Within weeks a member of the club help. Meanwhile Eri is at home and sleeps falls from the balcony of a hotel and dies. Joyce Carol Oates is the author of numerous a deep, heavy sleep that is ‘too perfect, too Something is poisoning their smug world of novels and a recipient of the National Book pure’ to be normal. flashy 4x4s, coffee mornings and wine-filled Award, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excel- evenings and bringing death in its wake. lence in Short Fiction, and the Prix Femina. Murakami, acclaimed master of the surreal, This is a high-spirited, sexy and ingeniously returns with a stunning new novel, where plotted tale about people desperate to hang Redemption Falls the familiar can become unfamiliar after on to the trappings of success--at any cost. midnight. Strange nocturnal happenings, or a trick of the night? Saskia Noort is a freelance journalist and writes features for, among others, the Dutch Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in editions of Marie Claire and Playboy. Her 1949. Known for his surrealistic world of first thriller, Back to the Coast was published mysterious (and often disappearing) women, to great acclaim. cats, earlobes, wells, Western culture, music and quirky first-person narratives, he is Lost Paradise Japan’s best-known novelist abroad. Eight Cees Nooteboom novels, two short story collections and one Translated from the original Dutch by work of non-fiction are currently available in Susan Massotty English translation. Nominated by: Rocking Horse Road Gemeentebibliotheek Utrecht, Carl Nixon The Netherlands Nominated by: Openbare Bibliotheek Eindhoven, Wellington City Libraries, New Zealand The Netherlands Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam, The body of a teenage girl is found on the The Netherlands beach in the days leading up to Christmas, 1980. It’s an event that makes a huge impact The Association of Public Libraries, on all those who live along Rocking Horse The Hague, The Netherlands Road, which runs through the Spit, a long “finger of bone-dry sand” between the ocean Alma and Almut share a fascination for and the estuary. It’s an event that for one hot Australia and its ancient peoples; their summer brings together a group of fifteen- ceremonies, sand drawings and body paint- year-old boys and then keeps them linked for ings. After Alma suffers a traumatic attack, Joseph O’Connor the rest of their lives. they board a cheap flight from São Paulo Nominated by: to Sydney, and together begin their journey Limerick City Library, Ireland This powerful novel is much more than an across their secret continent. Alma slowly intelligently evoked murder mystery. It’s a recovers through a brief love affair, and both Cork City Libraries, Ireland book about coming of age and loss of inno- women become involved with the Angel 1865. The American Civil War is ending. cence, not just for the characters but for New Project in Perth, where actors dressed as Eighteen years after the famine ship Star of Zealand, as the country turns upon itself angels are concealed around the city for the the Sea docked at New York, the daughter of during the 1981 Springbok Tour. public to discover. In a seemingly uncon- two of her passengers sets out from Baton nected story, a man staying at a remote Rouge, Louisiana, on a walk across a devas- Carl Nixon is a full-time writer of fiction Alpine spa unexpectedly meets a woman he tated America. Eliza Duane Mooney is and plays. His first book, Fish ‘n’ Chip Shop encountered years before and with whom he searching for a young boy she has not seen in Song and Other Stories was shortlisted for shared a single night. It was in a faraway city four years, one of the hundred thousand chil- the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. He lives and she was dressed as an angel. in Christchurch with his young family. dren drawn into the war. His fate has been Cees Nooteboom was born in the Hague in mysterious and will prove extraordinary. 1933. He is a poet and the author of prize- Redemption Falls is a tale of war and forgive- winning fiction and travel books. His books ness, of strangers in a strange land, of love have been translated into many languages. put to the ultimate test. Packed with music, balladry, poetry and storytelling, this is a riveting historical novel of urgent contempo- rary resonance.

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Joe O’Connor was born in Dublin. He has Coal Black Horse Divisadero written ten widely acclaimed and best-selling Robert Olmstead Michael Ondaatje books including the novels Cowboys and Nominated by: Nominated by: Indians, Desperadoes, The Salesman, Star of The Public Library of Cincinnati & Cape Town Central Library, South Africa the Sea, and Inishowen. His work has been Hamilton County, USA published in eighteen languages. Waterford County Library, Ireland When Robey Childs’s mother has a premo- Goteborg Stadsbibliotek, Sweden What Was Lost nition about her husband, a soldier fighting Tweebronnen Openbare Bibliotheek, Catherine O’Flynn in the Civil War, she does the unthinkable: Leuven, Belgium Nominated by: she sends her only child to find his father on Warsaw Public Library / Biblioteka Halifax Regional Library, Canada the battlefield and bring him home. At four- Glowna Województwa Mazowieckiego, Toronto Public Library, Canada teen, wearing the coat his mother sewed to Poland ensure his safety – blue on one side, gray on Birmingham Libraries, England the other – Robey thinks he’s off on a great Stadt-und Universitätsbibliothek Bern, Liverpool Libraries & Information adventure. But not far from home, his horse Switzerland Services, England falters and he realizes the enormity of his Stadtbücherei Frankfurt-am-Main, Belfast Education & Library Board, task. It takes the gift of a powerful and noble Germany England coal black horse to show him how to under- Stadtbibliothek Bremen, Germany take the most important journey of his life: Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf, Germany A lost little girl with her notebook and toy with boldness, bravery, and self-possession. monkey appears on the CCTV screens of Coal Black Horse joins the pantheon of great Winnipeg Public Library, Canada the Green Oaks shopping centre, evoking war novels. Cape Breton Regional Library, Sydney, memories of junior detective, Kate Meaney, Canada Robert Olmstead is the author of five missing for 20 years. Kurt, a security guard previous books and is the recipient of a Hartford Public Library, USA with a sleep disorder and Lisa, a disen- Guggenheim fellowship and an NEA chanted deputy manager at Your Music, Miami-Dade Public Library System, USA grant. He is a professor at Ohio Wesleyan follow her through the centre’s endless corri- University. It is the 1970s in Northern California. A dors – welcome relief from the behaviour of farmer and his teenage daughters, Anna and customers, colleagues and the Green Oaks Claire, work the land with the help of Coop, mystery shopper. But as this after-hours Last Night at the Lobster Stewart O’Nan the enigmatic young man who lives with friendship grows in intensity, it brings new them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until they loss and new longing to light. Nominated by: New York Public Library, USA are riven by an incident of violence – of both Catherine O’Flynn was born in Birmingham hand and heart – that sets fire to the rest of in 1970, She has been a teacher, web editor, Stewart O’Nan has been called “the bard their lives. mystery customer and postwoman. What Was of the working class” and has now crafted Anna will come to rest in the calming land- Lost is her first novel. a frank and funny yet emotionally resonant scape of south-central France. There, she tale set within a vivid workaday world seldom delves into the story of a writer who, decades Gregorius seen in contemporary fiction. Perched in earlier, lived in the isolated house she now Bengt Ohlsson the far corner of a run-down New England occupies. While Anna’s story lies at the heart Translated from the Swedish by Silvester mall, The Red Lobster hasn’t been making of the novel, the narrative sweeps across the Mazzarella its numbers and headquarters has pulled the terrain of the lives of Coop and Claire as well, plug. But manager Manny DeLeon still needs Nominated by: each of them managing to find some foothold to navigate a tricky last shift. With only four Goteborg Stadsbibliotek, Sweden in a present rough-hewn from the past. shopping days left until Christmas, Manny Deichmanske Bibliotek, Oslo, Norway must convince his near-mutinous staff to Michael Ondaatje is the author of five hunker down and serve the final onslaught of novels including The English Patient which In 1905 Hjalmar Soderberg published his hungry retirees, lunatics, and holiday office won the Booker Prize. Born in Sri Lanka, he diary novel, Doctor Glas, a literary tour parties. All the while, he’s wondering how to now lives in Toronto. de force which has remained one of the handle the waitress he’s still in love with, his masterpieces of Swedish literature. It is a pregnant girlfriend at home, and the perfect The Opposite House complicated love triangle, which culminates present he still needs to buy. Helen Oyeyemi in the murder of Gregorius, an apparently repulsive and hypocritical priest, by Doctor Stewart O’Nan is the author of ten novels, Nominated by: Glas, hopelessly in love with Gregorius’ including Snow Angels and A Prayer for the The Public Library of Cincinnati & young wife. Bengt Ohlsson, one of Sweden’s Dying, as well as works of nonfiction. He Hamilton County, USA most successful young writers, has responded lives with his family in Avon, Connecticut. Hartford Public Library, USA to Doctor Glas with Gregorius, which gives Gregorius himself a voice over the course of Maja was five years old when her black what could be his last and fateful summer. It Cuban family emigrated from the Caribbean is a compelling study of loneliness, longing to London. Now, almost twenty years later, and the nature of love; of the desires that Maja is a singer, in love with Aaron, pregnant, bring people together and the fears that keep and haunted by what she calls “her Cuba.” them apart. Growing up in London, she has struggled to negotiate her history and the sense that Bengt Ohlsson was born in 1963, and since speaking Spanish or English made her less of his critically acclaimed debut in 1984 he has a black girl. But she is unable to find herself risen steadily to become one of Sweden’s in the Ewe, Igbo, or Akum of her roots. It most celebrated young novelists. He lives in seems all that’s left is silence. On the other Stockholm. side of the reality wall, Yemaya Saramagua, a Santeria emissary, lives in a somewherehouse with two doors: one opening to London, the other to Lagos. Yemaya is troubled by the ease with which her fellow emissaries have disguised themselves behind the personas of saints and by her inability to recognize them.

18 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009

Helen Oyeyemi was born in Nigeria in 1984 how the death of Doyle’s wife Bernadette has to capture the photo he was never able to take; and has lived in London from the age of four. affected the family, and an anonymous figure to encapsulate, in an instant, the meaning of She is the author of the highly acclaimed who is always watching. war. But one day a stranger knocks on his novel, The Icarus Girl, which she wrote door and announces that he has come to before her nineteenth birthday. Ann Patchett is the author of four previous kill him. The man is a shadow from his past, novels, including Bel Canto, which won one of the myriad faces of war, and now the Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster the Orange prize. She lives in Nashville, consequences of his actions are brought home Casey Tennessee. to him. As the novel progresses, the story Chuck Palahniuk of both the soldier and the artist emerge, The Past entwined with a doomed love affair, and the Nominated by: Alan Pauls Stockholm Public Library, Sweden progress of a painting that is infused with the Translated from the original Spanish by history of art. Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli/Biblioteca Nick Caistor Nazionale “Vitt.Em.111”, Napoli, Italy Nominated by: Arturo Pérez-Reverte lives near Madrid. Biblioteca Demonstrativa de Brasília, His novels include The Flanders Panel, The Buster “Rant” Casey just may be the most effi- Brazil Club Dumas, The Fencing Master, The Seville cient serial killer of our time. A high school Communion, The Nautical Chart, The Queen rebel, Rant Casey escapes from his small Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas of El of the South and the bestselling Captain town home for the big city where he becomes Colegio de México, Mexico Alatriste series. the leader of an urban demolition derby Rímini splits up with his girlfriend of twelve called Party Crashing. Rant Casey will die years, Sofía. The parting is initially amicable The Worst Intentions a spectacular highway death, after which his and he moves on, carefree, with a new zest Alessandro Piperno friends gather the testimony needed to build for life. Hungry to make up for lost time and Translated from the original Italian by Ann an oral history of his short, violent life. With keen to forget the past, he finds a younger Goldstein hilarity, horror, and blazing insight, Rant is girlfriend and starts using cocaine. Sofía, Nominated by: a mind-bending vision of the future, as only however, finds herself unable to let go, and Chuck Palahniuk could ever imagine. Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze, continues to reappear on Rímini’s horizon. Florence, Italy Chuck Palahniuk’s seven novels are the best- As hard as Rímini tries to forget, Sofía will selling Haunted, Lullaby, Fight Club, Diary, not let him. Though the apparently idyllic Daniel is the thirty-three-year-old heir to the Survivor, Invisible Monsters, and Choke. He relationship is over, their love has not died, dappled fortunes of the Sonninos, a wealthy lives in the Pacific Northwest. merely taken on a different form. As time Jewish-Italian family whose staggering rise passes and their paths continue to cross, and fall during the years spanning the end of Rough Justice the past festers and torments them, like an WW2 and the beginning of the twenty-first Ralph Palmer infection century provides the richly colored backdrop Alan Pauls was born in Buenos Aires in to this remarkable tragi-comedy. Daniel Nominated by: 1959. He has published four novels, including Kenya National Library Service, Nairobi has inherited his grandfather’s extravagant the much-praised Wasabi. The Past has been passions and his father’s servility, as well as published in several foreign languages. Lord Digby Banks and his crony Lord Rupert the excesses of his social class. He is also Crook-Smith, ex-colonial governors, decide victim of a crippling infatuation with Gaia, to assassinate a few corrupt individuals in The Painter of Battles fountainhead of his erotic fantasies and Africa. A hit team is organised in London, fetishes. An audacious, sumptuous novel and targets are selected in Kenya using the about ritual and liberty, love and war, sex and news media. Things go wrong and the Lords betrayal, set in the opulent neighborhoods of are caught, but capital punishment prevents contemporary Rome. extradition, and in England, political expe- Alessandro Piperno was born in Rome in diency saves them from embarrassment. 1972. In 2000, he published his non-fiction Encouraged by their apparent immunity, a book, Proust Anti-Jew, dividing his readers second mission is launched by the Lords to into staunch supporters and fierce detractors. deal with corporate crime in America and His debut novel, The Worst Intentions won people start dying. The causes are traced the Campiello Prize for first novels. to them and the U.S. Attorney-General seeks extradition, but in the final analysis Doghead an American citizen is prosecuted, and an Morten Ramsland unusual verdict is reached… Translated from the original Danish by Tiina Nunnally Ralph Palmer, arrived in Kenya at the age of twenty-one and went on to serve the Kenyatta Nominated by: Government for six years after independence. Reykjavík City Library, Iceland Rough Justice is his fourth book. Deichmanske Bibliotek, Oslo, Norway Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark Run Ann Patchett Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker, Denmark Nominated by: In the Eriksson family, childhood is a Dunedin Public Libraries, New Zealand shocking experience, full of crude and Multnomah County Library, Portland, USA disturbing rites of passage. It all started with Arturo Pérez-Reverte Askild ‘the Crackpot’, chased by bloodhounds Tip and Teddy are becoming men under the Translated from the original Spanish by on a German plain after escaping from a very eyes of their adoptive father, Bernard Margaret Sayers Peden Nazi concentration camp: he is a painter, Doyle. A student at Harvard, Tip is happiest Nominated by: a murderer and a thief. His son, Niels ‘Jug in a lab, whilst Teddy thinks he has found his Biblioteca Municipal Central de Lisboa, Ears’ Junior, wins respect by kicking other calling in the Church, and both are increas- Portugal boys in the balls, and his son, Asger ‘the ingly strained by their father’s protective plans Liar’, collects stories about his shipwrecked for them. But when they are involved in an A man lives alone in a watchtower by the family which are always exciting though not accident on an icy road, the Doyles are forced sea. He is painting a grand mural – the time- entirely true. to confront certain truths about their lives, less landscape of a battle. He is a former war photographer, and the painting is his attempt

www.impacdublinaward.ie 19 Eligible Titles 2009

Doghead is a richly imaginative farcical Laura Restrepo is the bestselling author Ghost Writer, Exit Ghost is an amazing leap tragedy; a witty saga of three generations of of several prizewinning novels published in into yet another phase in this great writer’s wild Eriksson men. It touches on chilling over a dozen languages, including Leopard in insatiable commitment to fiction. themes – concentration camps, child abuse, the Sun and The Angel of Galilea. She lives in alcoholism, rape – yet warmly celebrates the Mexico City. Philip Roth is the only living American to stories that hold families together. have his work published in a comprehensive, Gold definitive edition by the Library of America. Morten Ramsland, born 1971, has a degree Dan Rhodes The last of eight volumes is scheduled for in Danish and Art History. Doghead is his publication in 2013. first book to be published in English. It Nominated by: became a huge bestseller in Denmark, and Glasgow Libraries Information & Other Country won four major literary prizes. Learning, Scotland

Exit Music Miyuki Woodward, lover of pints and Pot Ian Rankin Noodles, has been spending holidays in the same Welsh seaside town for years. She loves Nominated by: the wet walks, she loves The Anchor and Edinburgh City Libraries & Information most of all she loves the pub quiz. Services, Scotland This year, following an act of raw creativity It’s late autumn in Edinburgh and late involving some cans of gold spray paint, autumn in the career of Detective Inspector Miyuki will take part in the most turbulent John Rebus. As he tries to tie up some events the village has seen since Tall Mr loose ends before retirement, a murder case Hughes returned from the pub toilet without intrudes. A dissident Russian poet has been remembering to button up. found dead in what looks like a mugging gone wrong. By apparent coincidence, a high- Dan Rhodes was born in 1972. He is the level delegation of Russian businessmen is in author of Anthropology, Timoleon Vieta town – and everyone is determined that the Come Home and Don’t Tell Me the Truth case should be closed quickly and clinically. About Love, also published by Canongate. But the further they dig, the more Rebus and He lives in Edinburgh. DS Siobhan Clarke become convinced that they are dealing with something more than a The Lost Highway random attack – especially after a particularly David Adams Richards nasty second killing. Meanwhile, a brutal Nominated by: and premeditated assault on a local gangster Ottawa Public Library, Canada sees Rebus in the frame. Has the Inspector taken a step too far in tying up those loose For twenty years, Alex Chapman has been at ends? Only a few days shy of the end to his war with his great-uncle James. Disillusioned Stephen Scourfield long, inglorious career, will Rebus even make and ill-tempered, Alex believes James has Nominated by: it that far? destroyed his chances for happiness in life. The State Library of Western Australia, When he learns one night that James has Perth Ian Rankin is the author of the bestselling been sold a winning lottery ticket worth thir- Rebus crime novels which have been trans- teen million dollars, Alex immediately know Other Country tells the story of two young lated into twenty-two languages. He lives in that his uncle must never see the money. brothers, The Ace and Wild Billy, and their Edinburgh with his partner and two sons. The Lost Highway is a suspenseful story of struggle to overcome the bitter legacy of their brutal father. Bound by blood and memo- Delirium greed, betrayal, and murder. A page-turner with immense spiritual force. ries and trust, they are destined to clash Laura Restrepo one fettered by the past, the other straining Translated from the original Spanish by David Adams Richards works include The towards the future. Out of it all lead only two Natasha Wimmer Friends of Meager Fortune, River of the paths, to end up mean and empty like the Nominated by: Brokenhearted, Mercy Among the Children Old Man, or not. Written with an authentic Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Bogota, and the celebrated Miramichi trilogy, Nights grittiness and an understated, dry humour, Colombia Below Station Street, Evening Snow Will it is also an unforgettable story of the ‘other Bring Such Peace, and For Those Who Hunt country’ of the Top End, the implacable and Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas of El the Wounded Down unforgiving moods of the landscape and the Colegio de México, Mexico laconic and tough characters who make this Aguilar, an unemployed literature professor, Exit Ghost hard country their home Philip Roth returns home from a short trip to discover Other Country is Stephen Scourfield’s first that his wife, Agustina, has gone mad. He Nominated by: novel. He has written non-fiction and edited doesn’t know what has happened during his Buchereien Wein, Vienna, Austria many books, magazines, newspapers and absence, and in his search for answers, he Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Gent, specialist publications. gradually unearths profound and shadowy Belgium secrets about her past. On one level, Delirium Secrets of the Sea reads like a detective story, as the reader Alone in his New England mountain, Nathan Nicholas Shakespeare pieces together information to discover the Zukerman had been nothing but a writer: Nominated by: roots of Agustina’s madness. But it is also no voices, no media, no terrorist threats, no The State Library of Tasmania, a remarkably nuanced novel whose currents women, and no news. Now, back in New York Hobart, Australia run much deeper, delving into the minds City, walking the streets like a revenant, he of its characters: Laura Restrepo creates a quickly makes three connections that explode The National Library of Australia, searing portrait of a society battered by war his carefully protected solitude. Suddenly Canberra and corruption as well as an intimate look at involved, as he never wanted or intended Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek Bonn, the daily lives of people struggling to stay to be involved again, with love, mourning, Germany sane in an unstable country. desire and animosity, Zukerman plays out an Stadtbibliothek Leipzig, Germany interior drama of vivid and poignant possi- bilities. Haunted by Roth’s earlier work The Following the death of his parents in a car crash, eleven-year-old Alex Dove is torn from his life on a remote farm in Tasmania

20 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009 and sent to school in England. When he Animal’s People It is only as an adult, when he makes a journey returns to Australia twelve years later, the Indra Sinha back to Czechoslovakia, that he discovers timeless beauty of the land and his encounter Nominated by: their part in the assassination of Reinhard with a young woman whose own life has The Municipal Library of Prague, Heydrich, the notorious ‘butcher of Prague’. been marked by tragedy, persuade him to Czech Republic Embedded at the heart of this gripping stay. They marry, and he finds himself drawn history, is powerful love story – of a tragic into the eccentric, often hilarious dynamics Ever since he can remember, Animal has gone passion and an enduring commitment. of island life. Longing for children, the on all fours, his back twisted beyond repair couple open their home to a disquieting Mark Slouka is a Contributing Editor at by the catastrophic events of “that night” Harper’s and the author of on previous novel, guest, a teenage castaway, whose presence in when a burning fog of poison smoke from their home begins to unravel their tenuously Gods Fool, and a collection of stories, Lost the local factory blazed out over the town Lake. forged happiness of Khaufpur, and the Apocalypse visited his Nicholas Shakespeare is the author of The slums. Now just turned seventeen and well Girl meets boy Vision of Elena Silves, The High Flyer and schooled in street work, he lives by his wits, Ali Smith The Dancer Upstairs. In 1999 his biography, spending his days jamisponding (spying) on town officials and looking after the elderly Nominated by: Bruce Chatwin, was published to great crit- Glasgow Libraries Information & ical acclaim. nun who raised him. His nights are spent fantasizing about Nisha, the girlfriend of the Learning, Scotland local resistance leader, and wondering what it Jamestown Girl meets boy. It’s a story as old as time. must be like to get laid. Matthew Sharpe But what happens when an old story meets a Nominated by: Profane, piercingly honest, and scathingly brand new set of circumstances? Ali Smith’s Hartford Public Library, USA funny, Animal’s People illuminates a dark re-mix of Ovid’s most joyful metamorphosis world shot through with flashes of joy and is a story about the kind of fluidity that can’t Set in the indeterminate but not too distant lunacy. be bottled and sold. future, Jamestown chronicles a group of “settlers” (more like survivors), from the Indra Sinha was born in India. His work of It is about girls and boys, girls and girls, ravaged island of Manhattan, departing non-fiction, The Cybergypsies, and his first love and transformation, a story of puns and just as the Chrysler Building mysteriously novel, The Death of Mr Love, met with wide- doubles, reversals and revelations. Funny and collapses, heading down what’s left of I-95 in spread critical acclaim. He lives in France. fresh, poetic and political, Girl meets boy is an armor-plated vehicle that’s half-schoolbus, a myth of metamorphosis for the modern half-Millenium Falcon. They are going to Holy Hill world. Angelina N. Sithebe establish an outpost in southern Virginia, Ali Smith’s first book, Free Love, won the look for oil, and exploit the Indians control- Nominated by: Saltire First Book Award. She is also the ling the area. The story is of course based on Cape Town Central Library, South Africa author of Like, Other Stories And Other the actual accounts of the first ten years of Stories, Hotel World, The Whole Story and the Jamestown settlement from 1607 to the When Christina Nana Mlozi leaves Holy Other Stories and The Accidental. death of Pocahontas in 1617. Despite the grim Hill, a Roman Catholic convent school in sounding circumstances and large quantity Zululand, she is broken spiritually, mentally The Septembers of Shiraz of spilled blood, it’s a romantic book, a medi- and physically. A problem child, Nana was Dalia Sofer tation on history and interpretation, told in sent to the Convent by her parents at an Nominated by: language that is endlessly delightful. early age to be tutored and disciplined. A rebel who drifts between relationships, jobs, New Hampshire State Library, Matthew Sharpe is the author of the novels homes, Nana is accompanied by her guides Concord, USA The Sleeping Father, translated into nine and protectors, spirits and souls that find in In the aftermath of the Iranian revolution, languages, and Nothing Is Terrible, as well her a suitable host. The novel opens in the rare-gem dealer Isaac Amin is arrested, as the short-story collection Stories from the year 2004 in Durban where she meets her wrongly accused of being a spy. Terrified by Tube. nemesis and saviour: Claude Dema, former his disappearance, his family must reconcile child soldier, opportunistic male prosti- a new world of cruelty and chaos with the Custer’s Brother’s Horse tute, part-time drug dealer, a drug addict collapse of everything they have known. As Edwin Shrake who is a born-again Christian. A powerful Isaac navigates the terrors of prison, and his Nominated by: and disturbing South African story of the wife feverishly searches for him, his children Pikes Peak Library District, present, Angelina Sithebe’s novel prods struggle with the realization that their family Colorado Springs, USA harshly to a level of discomfort, raising issues may soon be forced to embark on a journey of about religion, patriarchy, child-rearing in incalculable danger. A young Confederate captain is on his way African society, xenophobia and justification home to his family plantation in the last days for petty crime. Dalia Sofer was born in Iran and fled at of the Civil War. He is accused of murder the age of ten to the United States with her Angelina Sithebe was born and raised in and is thrown into the stockade by U.S. family. She is the recipient of a Whiting Soweto. A graduate geologist from Brooklyn Army Capt. Santana Leatherwood, a Texan Writers’ Award. She lives in New York City. whose family has feuded bitterly for decades College in New York, she has worked in with the Robin family. human resources, scholarship, administra- tion, geotechnical engineering and mining. by George In the stockade Robin meets British novelist She lives in Johannesburg. Wesley Stace and adventurer Edmund Varney, in Austin to Nominated by: write the life story of Lt. Tom Custer, heroic The Visible World New York Public Library, USA younger brother of famous General George Mark Slouka Armstrong Custer. by George is the twisting story of four gener- Nominated by: ations of the curious Fisher family, as told The story races to the inevitable showdown Limerick City Library, Ireland by two boys named George Fisher: One, a between the Robins and Leatherwoods, two schoolboy in the 1970s; the other, a ventrilo- It begins with a boy, the child of Czech families on opposite sides in the Civil War. quist’s dummy in the second World War. It’s immigrants to the US, who is brought up on Then the story of “Custer’s Brother’s Horse” a story of love, loss and family ties, and of the ancient myths, and on the folktales of takes a surprising twist. two boys separated by years but driven by the his parents’ homeland. As he grows older, he same desires: to find a voice, and to be loved. Edwin “Bud” Shrake is the author of Blessed becomes aware that the one story he hasn’t McGill, Borderland and Strange Peaches. been told is what his parents did during the Movie credits include Tom Horn, Kid Blue war. and Songwriter. He lives in Austin, Texas.

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Wesley Stace (also known as John Wesley getting by working construction jobs though Escape Harding) cut short his Ph.D. studies to he’s known on the streets as “the professor,” Heleen Van Royen pursue a music career. His first novel, as he was expected to make something out of Translated from the original Dutch by Misfortune, was published in 2004. He lives his life. This is an extraordinary debut. It is Jantien Black in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter. a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it’s like to feel preprogrammed Nominated by: Ghostwalk to fail in life – and the urge to escape that Gemeentebibliotheek Rotterdam, Rebecca Stott sentence. The Netherlands Nominated by: Michael Thomas was born and raised in Julia is thirty-six years old. At first sight she Houston Public Library, USA Boston. He received his B.A. from Hunter has it all, but actually she feels miserable. College and his M.F.A. from Warren Wilson Trapped in the monotony of daily family life The son of a reclusive historian finds his College. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and fed up with her passionless marriage, mother’s drowned body in the tributary of and three children. Julia wants out. For once not to be a good the River Cam that runs through her garden. mother, a good wife, a good daughter. So for She is clutching a glass prism. Elizabeth Between Each Breath the first time in her life she does something Vogelsang’s magnum opus, a book on Isaac Adam Thorpe completely irresponsible: she leaves her family Newton’s alchemy, is incomplete. Lydia behind and heads off into the sun. When Brooke, a writer friend of the dead historian, Nominated by: The National Library of Estonia, Tallin Julia finally meets someone who makes her returns to Cambridge to the funeral. It is realize what she’s been missing all her life, five years since she has seen Elizabeth’s son, she is forced to reconcile with her past and Cameron Brown, with whom she has had Once ‘England’s most promising young composer’ – now living comfortably in confront the crucial question: does she dare an intermittent love affair that began years to go home? earlier. Soon Lydia finds herself entangled, Hampstead with his wife Milly, an heiress not only with Cameron, but also with a four- – Jack Middleton is in mid-life decline, his Heleen van Royen is one of the most famous hundred year-old murder mystery, a network career in free-fall. When he visits Estonia, he and infamous Dutch writers. Trained as a of 17th century alchemists and a ghostly falls for a young waitress called Kaja, deeply journalist, she worked for several newspapers, figure intent on disrupting her work. bound up in the suffering of her country and magazines and for radio. She lives in Portugal the joy and danger of its new freedom. They with her husband and two children. Rebecca Stott is a writer and broadcaster. embark on a passionate affair. Still child- Her work, in radio writing, fiction and non- less six years later, Jack and Milly’s marriage Omega Minor fiction, weaves together history, literature and shows the strain, but they battle on – until Paul Verhaeghen the history of science. She is the author of the the past returns with a vengeance. Set in Translated from the original Dutch by Paul non-fiction book Darwin and the Barnacle. London and Estonia between 1999 and Verhaeghen 2005 in the aftermath of the London bomb- Tomorrow ings Between Each Breath is a rich and often Nominated by: Graham Swift hilarious critique of Blair’s Britain: decadent, The Association of Public Libraries, Nominated by: bewildered, shallow and greedy. The Hague, The Netherlands M.I. Rudomino State Library for Foreign Adam Thorpe was born in Paris in 1956. His Gemeentebibliotheek Rotterdam, Literature, Moscow, Russia first novel, Ulverton, was published in 1992, The Netherlands Tampere City Library, Finland and he has written five other novels – most recently The Rules of Perspective –He lives in Berlin, Spring of 1995. While a group of On a midsummer’s night, Paula lies awake, France with his wife and three children. neo-Nazis are preparing an anniversary bash Mike, her husband of twenty-five years, of disastrous proportions, an old physics asleep beside her, her two teenage children, The Road Home professor returns to Potsdam to atone for his Nick and Kate, sleeping in nearby rooms. Rose Tremain sins, an Italian postdoc designs an experiment that will determine the fate of the universe, The next day, she knows, will define all their Nominated by: lives. As morning approaches, Paula recalls and, in a room at Le Charité, a Holocaust Belfast Education & Library Board, survivor tells his tale to the willing ear of a the years before and after her children were Northern Ireland born. Her story is both a celebration of love young psychologist. Cork City Libraries, Dublin possessed and a moving acknowledgement Moving back and forth between the main of the fear of loss, the fragilities, illusions ‘On the coach, Lev chose a seat near the back and stages of the past century – Berlin united and and secrets on which even our most intimate divided, Boston, Los Alamos, Auschwitz – sense of who we are can rest. he sat huddled against the window, staring out at the land he was leaving ...’ Lev is on his way Omega Minor is a novel of big ideas, a tale A masterful and compassionate novel about to Britain to seek work, so that he can send of survival of the soul cast in a whirlwind the mystery of happiness money back to Eastern Europe to support plot that is in turns smart, inquisitive, funny, his mother and little daughter. Readers violent, nutty, pornographic, moving, deeply Booker-Prize-winning novelist Graham will become totally involved with his story, compassionate, and profoundly moral. Or Swift was born in London in 1949. He is as he struggles with the mysterious rituals not. the author of several novels and has won the of ‘Englishness’, and the fashions and fads Geoffrey Faber and the James Tait Black Omega Minor is Belgian novelist Paul of the London scene. We see the road Lev Verhaeghen’s award-winning second Memorial prizes, as well as the Guardian travels through Lev’s eyes, and we share his Fiction Prize. novel, the first to be translated into English dilemmas: the intimacy of his friendships, from his native Dutch. He is also a cogni- old and new; his joys and sufferings; his Man Gone Down aspirations and his hopes of finding his way Michael Thomas home, wherever home may be. Nominated by: The National Library Service of Barbados, Rose Tremain’s books have won many Bridgetown prizes including the Whitbread Novel of the Year, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, On the eve of the unnamed narrator’s the Prix Femina Etranger, and the Dylan thirty-fifth birthday, he finds himself broke, Thomas Prize, She lives in North London estranged from his white Boston Brahmin and Norwich. wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend’s six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep his family afloat, four days to try to make some sense of his life. He’s been

22 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009 tive psychologist, and is currently associate of vibrant, captivating characters, she paints A Curious Intimacy professor at the Georgia Institute of Tech- their lives, loves, losses, and triumphs in a Jessica White nology in Atlanta. brilliant portrait of her own. Nominated by: Susan Vreeland is the bestselling author of The State Library of Western Australia, Where Three Roads Meet Perth Salley Vickers Girl in Hyacinth Blue, The Passion of Artem- isia, The Forest Lover, and Life Studies. Her Nominated by: novels have been translated into twenty-five In the 1870s two remarkable women meet in Chicago Public Library, USA languages. She lives in California. a remote country town in Western Australia. Ingrid is a botanist, fiercely independent It is 1938 and Sigmund Freud, suffering The Milk Chicken Bomb and travelling alone as she collects botan- from the debilitating effects of cancer, has Andrew Wedderburn ical specimens. She’s also trying to out-run been permitted by the Nazis to leave Vienna. a broken heart after her lover, Helena, was He seeks refuge in England, taking up resi- Nominated by: forced to marry. dence in Hampstead where he will die fifteen Calgary Public Library, Canada months later. But his last months are made Ingrid puts her own troubles aside on vivid by the arrival of a stranger, who comes The kid sells lemonade. Not a lot of people meeting Ellyn, a young woman living in and goes according to Freud’s state of health. buy lemonade, especially now that it’s winter, stark isolation, and driven close to madness Who is the mysterious visitor and why has but the kid makes good lemonade, even if his by the death of her baby daughter. Ellyn’s he come to tell the famed proponent of the friend Mullen thinks it ought to be sweeter. husband is away indefinitely and she’s had no word from him, while the small commu- Oedipus complex his strange story? They don’t talk much with the other ten- nity has turned its back on her because of her year-olds – most of the others are Dead Set partly in pre-war London and partly in ‘unseemly’ grieving. ancient Greece, Where Three Roads Meet is Kids anyway. But in small-town Alberta, as compelling as it is moving. Salley Vickers there are just too many roman-candle fights, When the two women meet, they forge a revisits a crime committed long ago which bonspiels, retaliatory river diversions, black- bond that grows ever deeper. But can their still has disturbing reverberations for us all. market submarines, exploding boilers, intimacy find acceptance in their conven- meat-packing-plant suicides and recess-time tional world? Salley Vickers is an acclaimed author and lightning strikes for one lonely kid to get any trained analytical psychologist. She lives and attention. He might as well go to Kazakhstan. Jessica White grew up in New South Wales. works in London and Bath. Then the adults in his life start disappearing She is currently completing a PhD at the down tunnels and into rendering vats. Being London Consortium on written communi- Luncheon of the Boating Party ten is hard enough without all that, espe- cation between England and Australia. A cially when your best friend is ruining the Curious Intimacy is her first novel. lemonade. The Shadow Catcher Andrew Wedderburn has worked in commu- Marianne Wiggins nity radio and co-operative bookstores. Now Nominated by: he explains stock photography for a living. The Free Library of Philadelphia, USA His rock’n’roll outfit, Hot Little Rocket, has played across Canada. The Milk Chicken Lincoln City Libraries, USA Bomb is his first novel. He lives in Calgary. Stockholm Public Library, Sweden

Lucky Bastard The Shadow Catcher dramatically inhabits Peter Wells the space where past and present intersect, Nominated by: seamlessly interweaving narratives from Auckland City Libraries, New Zealand two different eras: the first fraught passion between turn-of-the-twentieth-century How do you make sense of the past when icon Edward Curtis (1868-1952) and his it suddenly explodes into the present? In muse-wife, Clara; and a twenty-first-century post-war Japan, Eric Keeling must investi- journey of redemption. gate an alleged war crime, but do his actions Narrated in the first person by a reimagined constitute a further crime? In New Zealand, writer named Marianne Wiggins, the novel half a century later, this is the question that begins in Hollywood, where top producers confronts his two children. The have grown are eager to sentimentalize the complicated up with a difficult father, who was trauma- life of Edward Curtis as a sunny biopic: “It’s tised by his past as a prisoner of war. Was he got the outdoors. It’s got adventure. It’s got the a war hero, or guilty of an unscrupulous act do-good element.” Yet, contrary to Curtis’s of revenge? As their father loses his hold on esteemed public reputation as servant to his Susan Vreeland reality, they must sift through the facts and nation, the artist was an absent husband and fictions of what really happened, and in the Nominated by: disappearing father. Jump to the next gener- process they discover a new sense of family. Galway County Library, Ireland ation, when Marianne’s own father, John Peter Wells’ first book, Dangerous Desires, Wiggins (1920-1970), would live and die in Instantly recognizable, Auguste Renoir’s won the 1992 New Zealand Book Award for equal thrall to the impulse of wanderlust. masterpiece depicts a gathering of his real Fiction and the 1992 PEN Best First Book in Marianne Wiggins is the author of seven friends enjoying a summer Sunday on a café Prose Award. His last novel, Iridescence, was books of fiction including John Dollar and terrace along the Seine near Paris. A wealthy a runner up for the 2004 Deutz Medal for Evidence of Things Unseen. She has won an painter, an art collector, an Italian jour- Fiction and a finalist in the Tasmania Pacific NEA grant, the Whiting Writers’ Award, nalist, a war hero, a celebrated actress, and Fiction Prize. and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Renoir’s future wife, among others, share this moment of la vie moderne, a time when social constraints were loosening and Paris The Architects Are Here Michael Winter was healing after the Franco-Prussian War. Narrated by Renoir and seven of the models Nominated by: and using settings in Paris and on the Seine, St. John’s Public Libraries, Canada Vreeland illuminates the gusto, hedonism, and art of the era. With a gorgeous palette Michael Winter’s new novel features the unexpected return of Gabriel English, the popular and controversial protagonist of

www.impacdublinaward.ie 23 Eligible Titles 2009 three of his previous critically acclaimed October Alissa York’s highly acclaimed first novel, books. Prompted by a near death experi- Mercy, was published in 2003. She won the ence involving a wayward billboard Gabriel Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Mani- is forced to come to terms with the disap- toba Publisher for her short story collection, pearance of his enigmatic girlfriend Nell. Any Given Power. She lives in Toronto. After packing up the shattered remnants of his Toronto apartment Gabriel sets out on an The Succubus impromptu road trip with his roguish friend Vlado Žabot David Twombly to Corner Brook Newfound- Translated from the original Slovenian by land, their childhood home and the site of a Rawley Grau and Nikolai Jeffs recent accident involving David’s father in which Nell may be implicated. Nominated by: Knjižnica Otona Župancica, Together, Gabriel and David explore the Ljubljana, Slovenia uneven terrain of lifelong friendships in this vivid portrait of lives in exciting and reck- The Succubus is set in an urban environment less flux. where fear lurks in the shadows with some unidentified evil. The human individual Michael Winter most recent novel, The must confront a threat that comes not only Big Why, was shortlisted for the Trillium form nature or civilization but also from Book Award and the Thomas Head Raddall himself, for he projects himself onto his Atlantic Fiction Award. surroundings. The Stone Gods Valent Kosmina, the protagonist of The Jeanette Winterson Succubus, is dominated by the desire for love. Nominated by: The history of his involvement with women, Waterford County Library, Ireland which is present in the form of fleeting images in his consciousness, comprises a The world may slowly be coming to an end, Richard B. Wright string of disappointments. The reason behind but for Billie and Spike it’s just the begin- Nominated by: this multiplicity is a woman who, like the ning. Sent into space to explore the Blue The State Library of South Australia, demonic succubus of legend, preys on men’s Planet – a strange but habitable new world Adelaide minds with her beautiful appearance. where leaves are a big as cities, birds nest Vlado Žabot made his literary debut in 1986 in shells and humanity could have a second In England to see his daughter, Susan, who with a collection of short stories entitled The chance – they start to fall in love. But what is gravely ill, James Hillyer, encounters by Bukovo Mother. He has also written prose will they discover in their newfound land? chance a man he once knew as a boy. Gabriel for children and teenagers. Since 2003 he has As they whirl into the future, through new Fontaine, a rich and attractive American, is been the president of the Slovene Writers’ lifetimes different identities and dazzling a mercurial figure, badly crippled by polio. Association. stories, will they ever truly find a home? As an adolescent, James was both attracted to and repelled by Gabriel’s cocksure attitude Jeanette Winterson OBE, whose writing and charm. He also fell hopelessly in love The Seventh Gate Richard Zimler has won many awards, is the author of some with Odette, a French–Canadian girl from of the most purely imaginative and pleasur- the village, only to find himself in competi- Nominated by: able novels of recent times, from Oranges Are tion with the careless Gabriel. Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto, Not the Only Fruit to her first book for chil- Portugal dren, Tanglewreck. Now, at this random meeting over six decades later – as he struggles with the terrible possi- Set in 1930s Berlin, during the Nazis’ rise The Seamstress bility that he could outlive his own daughter to power, The Seventh Gate brings together Gearldine Wooller – James is asked by Gabriel to accompany Sophie Riedesel, an intelligent, artistic, and him on a final, unthinkable journey. Nominated by: sexually adventurous fourteen year old with Isaac Zarco and his friends, most of whom The State Library of Western Australia, Richard Wright is the author of ten acclaimed are Jews, ex-circus performers and under- Perth novels, including The Age of Longing, Clara ground activists. When a series of forced Callan and Adultery. Jo narrates the story of her strong, passionate sterilizations, brutal murders and disap- mother, Willa, whose gradual slide into pearings’ to concentration camps decimates Effigy the group, Sophie must fight with all her dementia shifts them into a new and diffi- Alissa York cult relationship. Willa’s life since arriving in ingenuity and guile to save all that she loves Australia from Scotland as a young woman Nominated by: about Germany – at any cost. In its beauti- is re-created in vignettes: her spectacularly Winnipeg Public Library, Canada fully shaped portraits and in its chilling but wrong choice in husband, the eccentrici- sensuous evocation of Berlin in the 1930s, A stunning novel of loss, memory, despair ties of her family, the community of friends The Seventh Gate is at one and the same time and deliverance, set on a Mormon ranch in that sustain her, and her enduring capacity a love story and tragedy – and a tale of fero- nineteenth-century Utah. Dorrie, a shock- for joy. And in the telling, Jo also confronts cious heroism. pale child with a mass of untameable black her own life choices as a woman addicted to hair, cannot recall anything of her life before Richard Zimler was born in New York. His ‘being perpetually worried about something she recovered from an illness at seven. A soli- novels include Unholy Ghosts, The Angelic or other. And certainly addicted to love.’ tary child, she spends her spare time learning Darkness, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon and The Seamstress is a memorable tale of friend- the art of taxidermy, completely fascinated Hunting Midnight. He has won many prizes ship and love between women, infused with by the act of bringing new and eternal life for his writing, abundant warmth and wry humour. to the bodies of the dead. At fourteen, her parents marry her off to Erastus Hammer, Geraldine Wooller She has also published a polygamous horse breeder and renowned many short stories, and has won awards for hunter. The role he has in mind for his fourth her short fiction.The Seamstress is her second and youngest wife is creator of trophies of his novel. Geraldine lives in Perth. most impressive kills. Inspired by the real events of the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857, Alissa York blends fact with fiction in a haunting story of a family separated by secrets and united by faith.

24 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009

Gabrielle Alioth was born 1955 in Basel, Vesna Goldsworthy, born in 1961 in Belgrade, Switzerland, and having studied economics was an acclaimed poet and radio presenter when (M.A.) and the history of art, worked in she left Yugoslavia for England in 1986. Since econometric forecasting before emigrating to then, she has worked in UK publishing, for the Ireland in 1984. Her first novel Der Narr (The BBC World Service, and as a university teacher. Fool) was published in 1990. It received the She is currently Reader in English and Creative HamburgThe literary award 2009 for best first novel. HerJudging WritingPanel at Kingston University. She reviews for seventh and most recent novel The Bride from publications in Europe and North America, and Byzantium appeared in 2008. She also writes has edited Writing Worlds 1: The Norwich Exchanges children’s and travel books. Gabrielle does (2006), a book of conversations with international extensive reading tours in Europe, India, Canada writers. Her first book, Inventing Ruritania: The and the United States. Since 2004 she has been a Imperialism of the Imagination (Yale, 1998) is on lecturer at the Lucerne School of Art and Design. the reading lists of some sixty universities world- She lives in Julianstown, County Meath. wide. Her second, a memoir entitled Chernobyl Strawberries, was published by Atlantic in March 2005 to broad critical acclaim.

James Ryan is a native of Rathdowney, Co. Laois Rachel Billington worked in television in London and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin. His and New York before taking up full-time writing. postgraduate studies focused primarily on creative Her first novel All Things Nice is set in New development. His first novel, Home from England, York. She has written nineteen adult novels, four was published by Phoenix House, London in childrens’ novels, five religious books for children 1995. Dismantling Mr Doyle followed in 1997 and and three non-fiction books. Her latest novel, his third novel, Seeds of Doubt, was published by Lies & Loyalties was published in 2008. She has Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 2001. South of the also written and continues to write journalism for Border, his most recent novel was short-listed fro newspapers both in the UK and the US, including the 2008 Kerry Group Literary prize. He is a a three-year stint as a columnist for The Sunday lecturer in the School of English, Drama and Film Telegraph. Rachel Billington was President of in UCD, currently directing the postgraduate English PEN, the writers’ organisation from programme in creative writing. 1998-2001 and remains a Vice-president. During her time as President she initiated PEN’s Readers & Writers Programme, which sends books, and writers to meet readers in schools and prisons. She is a Trustee of the Longford Trust, which was set Timothy Taylor is an award winning Canadian up, in memory of her father, Lord Longford. novelist and journalist. His novels – Stanley Park (2001) and Story House (2006) – were national bestsellers and he has received nominations for Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan, non-voting chair numerous literary prizes including the Giller of the judging panel, is a former Chief Judge of Prize, the Writers Trust Fiction Prize, and a US Court of Appeals and brings a wealth of both the Vancouver and British Columbia Book experience from sixteen years on the bench. His Awards. His short story collection Silent Cruise first novel, The Majority Rules, was published in (2002) earned him the Journey Prize and second 2005. His second novel of his political thriller place in the Danuta Gleed Award, given to the trilogy, The Report to the Judicicary, was published best collection of stories published in Canada in in 2008. Judge Sullivan is currently a senior a given year. Taylor is also the winner of three partner in Freeh Group Intenational, a global National Magazine Awards. He lives in Vancouver consultant group of former judges based in where he splits his time between fiction, writing Washington DC: Wilmington, Delaware; London for screen and journalism. He’s a contributing and Rome. editor at enRoute Magazine and Vancouver Magazine, and a columnist for the Globe and Mail.

www.impacdublinaward.ie 25 Eligible Titles 2009

Participating Libraries – 157 libraries representing 117 cities in 41 countries

Australia Estonia Adelaide, The State Library of South Australia Tallinn, Eesti Rahvusraamatukogu / National Library of Estonia Sydney, The State Library of New South Wales Finland Perth, The State Library of Western Australia Tampere, Tampere City Library Hobart, The State Library of Tasmania Helsinki, Helsingin Kaupunginkirjasto / Helsinki City Library Brisbane, The State Library of Queensland France Canberra, The National Library of Australia Nice, Bibliothèque Municipale de Nice Austria Lyon, Bibliothèque Municipale de Lyon Vienna, Buchereien Wein Germany Barbados Bonn, Universitäts-und Landesbibliothek Bonn Bridgetown, National Library Service of Barbados Munich, Münchner Stadtbibliothek

Belgium Bremen, Stadtbibliothek Bremen Gent, Stedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Gent Leipzig, Stadtbibliothek Leipzig Leuven, Tweebronnen Openbare Bibliotheek Frankfurt, Stadtbücherei Frankfurt-am-Main Brussels, Hoofdstedelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Dusseldorf, Stadtbüchereien Düsseldorf

Brazil Greece Brasilia, Biblioteca Demonstrativa de Brasília BDB Thessaloniki, Municipal Library of Thessaloniki Veria, Veria Central Public Library Bulgaria Sofia, National Library “St. St. Cyril & Methodius” Hungary Kecskemét, (Bács-Kiskun County Government) Katona József County Canada Library Vancouver, Vancouver Public Library Calgary, Calgary Public Library Iceland Reykjavík, Borgarbókasafn Reykjavíkur / Reykjavík City Library Toronto, Toronto Public Library Halifax, Halifax Regional Library Ireland Edmonton, Edmonton Public Library Dublin, Dublin City Public Libraries Ottawa, Ottawa Public Library Waterford, Waterford County Library Sydney, Cape Breton Regional Library Galway, Galway County Library Winnipeg, Winnipeg Public Library Cork, Cork City Libraries St John’s, St. John’s Public Libraries Limerick, Limerick City Library

Colombia Italy Bogota, Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli/Biblioteca Nazionale “Vitt. Czech Republic Em.111” Napoli Prague, Mestska Knihovna v Praze / Municipal Library of Prague Rome, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma Karviná-Mizerov, Regional Library of Karviná Jamaica Denmark Kingston, Jamaica Library Service Aarhus, Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker Kenya Copenhagen, Copenhagen Central Library Nairobi, Kenya National Library Service England Lebanon Gateshead, Gateshead Libraries & Arts Beirut, Jafet Library- American University of Beirut Birmingham, Birmingham Libraries Liverpool, Liverpool Libraries & Information Services Mexico Mexico City, Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas of El Colegio de México Newcastle, Newcastle Libraries & Information Service Sheffield, Sheffield Libraries, Archives & Information Services London, London’s Public Libraries

26 www.impacdublinaward.ie Eligible Titles 2009

New Zealand The Netherlands Wellington, Wellington City Libraries Utrecht, Gemeentebibliotheek Utrecht Auckland, Auckland City Libraries Amsterdam, Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam Dunedin, Dunedin Public Libraries Rotterdam, Gemeentebibliotheek Rotterdam Christchurch, Christchurch City Libraries The Hague, The Association of Public Libraries Eindhoven, Openbare Bibliotheek Eindhoven Northern Ireland Belfast, Belfast Education & Library Board Uganda Kampala, National Library of Uganda Norway Bergen, Bergen Offentlige Bibliotek USA Oslo, Deichmanske Bibliotek Lincoln, Lincoln City Libraries Stavanger, Stavanger Bibliotek og Kulturhus Chicago, Chicago Public Library Cincinnati, Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County Poland Lódz, Wojewódzka i Miejska Biblioteka Publiczna im Marszalka Cleveland, Cleveland Public Library J.Pilsudskiego Colorado Springs, Pikes Peak Library District Warsaw, Warsaw Public Library / Biblioteka Glowna Województwa Denver, Denver Public Library Mazowieckiego Tallahassee, LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library Portugal Milwaukee, Milwaukee Public Library Lisbon, Biblioteca Municipal Central de Lisboa Miami, Miami-Dade Public Library System Porto, Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto Hartford, Hartford Public Library Russia Kansas City, Kansas City Public Library Moscow, M.I. Rudomino State Library for Foreign Literature Concord, New Hampshire State Library

Scotland Boston, Boston Public Library Glasgow, Glasgow Libraries Information & Learning Cheyenne, Laramie County Library System Aberdeen, Aberdeen Library & Information Services Richmond, Richmond Public Library Edinburgh, Edinburgh City Libraries & Information Services New York, New York Public Library Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Department of Libraries Serbia Belgrade, Municipal Public Library “Milutin Bojic” Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia Portland, Multnomah County Library Slovakia Springfield, Lincoln Library Ljubljana, Knjižnica Otona Župancica San Diego, San Diego Public Library South Africa San Francisco, San Francisco Public Library Cape Town, Cape Town Central Library San José, San José Public Library Johannesburg, City of Johannesburg Library & Information Services Library and Information Services Houston, Houston Public Library Columbia, Richland County Public Library Spain Barcelona, Consorci de Biblioteques de Barcelona Spotted in Ottawa Sweden Stockholm, Stockholm Public Library Pulic Library Gothenburg, Goteborg Stadsbibliotek

Switzerland Bern, Stadt-und Universitätsbibliothek Bern Geneva, Bibliothèques Municipales Geneva

The Gambia Banjul, The Gambia National Library

Taken by Dublin City Library staff on holiday – posters have also been seen recently in Freetown, Sierra Leone and Oslo, Norway. Please send us your photos of displays in your library. www.impacdublinaward.ie 27 Books in Translation

DUBLIN – THE INTERNATIONAL DIMENSION

ISSN 1393-8908

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, an initiative of Dublin City Contact us Council, is a partnership between Dublin City Council, the municipal government authority of Ireland’s capital city and IMPAC, a company committed to productivity International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award improvement, operating in over 50 countries world-wide. Dublin City Library & Archive 138-144 Pearse Street Patron of the Award: The Lord Mayor of Dublin Ireland Fiction Matters, the newsletter of the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Telephone: + 353 1 674 4802 / 1 is an occasional publication issued at least once a year. Facsimile: + 353 1 674 4879 E-mail: [email protected] © Dublin City Public Libraries 2008 Web: www.impacdublinaward.ie