Man Booker Prize
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Franz Ferdinand
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Franz Ferdinand wrote:SARAH WATERS, The Night Watch
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller.
This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching...Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret...Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover...Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances...
Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is thrilling. A towering achievement.
Sounds like a British film from the 1940s starring the likes of Deborah Kerr, Ann Todd, Margaret Lockwood and James Mason!
And if Hollywood got their hands on the project instead, substitute Olivia de Havilland and Ida Lupino for Todd and Lockwood and Tyrone Power for Mason.
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Franz Ferdinand
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The announcement will be on October 10, here are the nominees:
KIRAN DESAI, The Inheritance of Loss
In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge’s cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are claimed by his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. When an Indian–Nepali insurgency in the mountains interrupts Sai’s exploration of the many incarnations and facets of a romance with her Nepali tutor, and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they are forced to consider their colliding interests.
In a generous vision, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, Desai presents the human quandaries facing a panoply of characters. This majestic novel of a busy, grasping time—every moment holding out the possibility of hope or betrayal—illuminates the consequences of colonialism and global conflicts of religion, race, and nationalism.
KATE GRENVILE, The Secret River: A Novel
With publication in Australia, Canada, the US, the UK andseveral other European countries, The Secret River signals the arrival ofa true global literary talent. This is the newest novel from bestsellingAustralian author Kate Grenville—winner of the Orange Prize—a grand epicthat sweeps across the 19th century from the teeming banks of the Thames inLondon to the fledgling settlement of Sydney, Australia.
The story of William Thornhill, whose abject poverty forces himinto a decision that will banish him and his family to a life sentence spent inNew South Wales, The Secret River is a richly layered tale of afierce and unforgiving land, the universal quest for its ownership, and thebrutal price paid by those would who colonize it and by its first inhabitants.At the heart of the novel runs the river, a source of power—and destruction—for William and his family.
Kate Grenville’s immense gift for portraying the universalemotions that both connect and divide us shines through this profoundlyrewarding book, a story that lingers long after the last page.
MJ HYLAND, Carry Me Down
Eleven-year-old John Egan knows he has a special gift: he can tell when people are lying. Their untruths set his eyes stinging and his stomach heaving. John thinks that one day his gift will make him famous and guarantee entry into the the Guinness Book of World Records. Until then, he has to navigate his father’s anger and his mother’s abrupt and confusing changes between treating him like a little boy and a then like a man. When the family is forced from their rural cottage into the council-flat slums of Dublin, John discovers that the lies that make him sick are also shielding him from the truth that threatens to destroy his family.
A portrait of a boy who is a contradiction between aching vulnerability and a menacing anger fuelled by pain, Carry Me Down is a raw, beautiful read, another intensely profound and powerful story from a writer to watch.
HISHAM MATAR, In The Country Of Men
Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman’s days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father’s constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother’s increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn’t he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie?
Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand—where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father’s cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend’s father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television.
In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace.
EDWARD St. AUBYN, Mother's Milk
This elegant and witty satire on the dissatisfactions of family life, which continues the story of Patrick Melrose, the hero of St. Aubyn's U.S. debut (Some Hope), opens in August 2000 at Patrick's mother's home in the south of France, with Patrick's five-year-old son, Robert, remembering with preternatural clarity the circumstances of his birth. No one on this vacation is particularly happy; Robert realizes he's being displaced by the arrival of baby brother Thomas, and Patrick is furious because his mother plans to leave her house (and what remains of her fortune) to Seamus Dourke, a ridiculous New Age guru. Over the next three Augusts, the Melrose story unfolds from different points of view: Patrick is deep in the throes of a midlife crisis; Mary, his wife, feels her self has been obliterated by the incessant demands of motherhood; and the two precociously verbal children struggle to make sense of the complexities of life. The narrative itself is thin, but the pleasures of the book reside in the author's droll observations (overweight Americans, for example, have "become their own air-bag systems in a dangerous world"). It's yet another novel about familial dysfunction but told in a fresh, acerbic way.
SARAH WATERS, The Night Watch
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller.
This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching...Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret...Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover...Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances...
Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is thrilling. A towering achievement.
KIRAN DESAI, The Inheritance of Loss
In a crumbling, isolated house at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas lives an embittered judge who wants only to retire in peace, when his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, arrives on his doorstep. The judge’s cook watches over her distractedly, for his thoughts are claimed by his son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one gritty New York restaurant to another. When an Indian–Nepali insurgency in the mountains interrupts Sai’s exploration of the many incarnations and facets of a romance with her Nepali tutor, and causes their lives to descend into chaos, they are forced to consider their colliding interests.
In a generous vision, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, Desai presents the human quandaries facing a panoply of characters. This majestic novel of a busy, grasping time—every moment holding out the possibility of hope or betrayal—illuminates the consequences of colonialism and global conflicts of religion, race, and nationalism.
KATE GRENVILE, The Secret River: A Novel
With publication in Australia, Canada, the US, the UK andseveral other European countries, The Secret River signals the arrival ofa true global literary talent. This is the newest novel from bestsellingAustralian author Kate Grenville—winner of the Orange Prize—a grand epicthat sweeps across the 19th century from the teeming banks of the Thames inLondon to the fledgling settlement of Sydney, Australia.
The story of William Thornhill, whose abject poverty forces himinto a decision that will banish him and his family to a life sentence spent inNew South Wales, The Secret River is a richly layered tale of afierce and unforgiving land, the universal quest for its ownership, and thebrutal price paid by those would who colonize it and by its first inhabitants.At the heart of the novel runs the river, a source of power—and destruction—for William and his family.
Kate Grenville’s immense gift for portraying the universalemotions that both connect and divide us shines through this profoundlyrewarding book, a story that lingers long after the last page.
MJ HYLAND, Carry Me Down
Eleven-year-old John Egan knows he has a special gift: he can tell when people are lying. Their untruths set his eyes stinging and his stomach heaving. John thinks that one day his gift will make him famous and guarantee entry into the the Guinness Book of World Records. Until then, he has to navigate his father’s anger and his mother’s abrupt and confusing changes between treating him like a little boy and a then like a man. When the family is forced from their rural cottage into the council-flat slums of Dublin, John discovers that the lies that make him sick are also shielding him from the truth that threatens to destroy his family.
A portrait of a boy who is a contradiction between aching vulnerability and a menacing anger fuelled by pain, Carry Me Down is a raw, beautiful read, another intensely profound and powerful story from a writer to watch.
HISHAM MATAR, In The Country Of Men
Libya, 1979. Nine-year-old Suleiman’s days are circumscribed by the narrow rituals of childhood: outings to the ruins surrounding Tripoli, games with friends played under the burning sun, exotic gifts from his father’s constant business trips abroad. But his nights have come to revolve around his mother’s increasingly disturbing bedside stories full of old family bitterness. And then one day Suleiman sees his father across the square of a busy marketplace, his face wrapped in a pair of dark sunglasses. Wasn’t he supposed to be away on business yet again? Why is he going into that strange building with the green shutters? Why did he lie?
Suleiman is soon caught up in a world he cannot hope to understand—where the sound of the telephone ringing becomes a portent of grave danger; where his mother frantically burns his father’s cherished books; where a stranger full of sinister questions sits outside in a parked car all day; where his best friend’s father can disappear overnight, next to be seen publicly interrogated on state television.
In the Country of Men is a stunning depiction of a child confronted with the private fallout of a public nightmare. But above all, it is a debut of rare insight and literary grace.
EDWARD St. AUBYN, Mother's Milk
This elegant and witty satire on the dissatisfactions of family life, which continues the story of Patrick Melrose, the hero of St. Aubyn's U.S. debut (Some Hope), opens in August 2000 at Patrick's mother's home in the south of France, with Patrick's five-year-old son, Robert, remembering with preternatural clarity the circumstances of his birth. No one on this vacation is particularly happy; Robert realizes he's being displaced by the arrival of baby brother Thomas, and Patrick is furious because his mother plans to leave her house (and what remains of her fortune) to Seamus Dourke, a ridiculous New Age guru. Over the next three Augusts, the Melrose story unfolds from different points of view: Patrick is deep in the throes of a midlife crisis; Mary, his wife, feels her self has been obliterated by the incessant demands of motherhood; and the two precociously verbal children struggle to make sense of the complexities of life. The narrative itself is thin, but the pleasures of the book reside in the author's droll observations (overweight Americans, for example, have "become their own air-bag systems in a dangerous world"). It's yet another novel about familial dysfunction but told in a fresh, acerbic way.
SARAH WATERS, The Night Watch
Moving back through the 1940s, through air raids, blacked out streets, illicit liaisons, sexual adventure, to end with its beginning in 1941, The Night Watch is the work of a truly brilliant and compelling storyteller.
This is the story of four Londoners - three women and a young man with a past, drawn with absolute truth and intimacy. Kay, who drove an ambulance during the war and lived life at full throttle, now dresses in mannish clothes and wanders the streets with a restless hunger, searching...Helen, clever, sweet, much-loved, harbours a painful secret...Viv, glamour girl, is stubbornly, even foolishly loyal, to her soldier lover...Duncan, an apparent innocent, has had his own demons to fight during the war. Their lives, and their secrets connect in sometimes startling ways. War leads to strange alliances...
Tender, tragic and beautifully poignant, set against the backdrop of feats of heroism both epic and ordinary, here is a novel of relationships that offers up subtle surprises and twists. The Night Watch is thrilling. A towering achievement.