Notorious French author Frédéric Beigbeder and his translator Frank Wynne share £10,000 for winning this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. The winning book, Windows on the World, published here by 4th Estate, portrays the final hours of a Texan property dealer and his sons in the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre’s north tower (the restaurant was called Windows on the World) on 11 September 2001. Meanwhile, in Paris, a French writer struggles to make sense of the terrible events and their aftermath, treating it as a call to conscience and personal reform.
The Independent refers to A recent New York Times article on Beigbeder which accuses him of being “a hipster nihilist, a publicity hound, a jerk, a self-impressed renegade”. However, it then went on to ask “How is it […] that he has written so funny and moving a book?” about the most sensitive and taboo moment in recent American history. Beigbeder himself writes: “It’s impossible to write about this subject, and yet it is impossible to write about anything else”, and concludes: “The only thing we deserve to be remembered for is how well and generously we loved”.
The choice of Beigbeder’s book was not unanimous amongst the judges, so they decided to nominate a runner-up: Give Me (Songs for Lovers) by 24-year-old Russian writer Irina Denezhkina. It is her first book, a collection of stories, translated by Andrew Bromfield for Chatto & Windus.
Last year, the prize was awarded to Spanish author Javier Cercas, and his translator Anne McLean, for Soldiers of Salamis.
The User Education pages on the University Library (UL) website offer a wide range of free training courses, mostly half day or one day, covering areas such as using the online Electronic Resources (journals, bibliographic databases, subject resources), Newton (the web based catalogue covering most of the libraries of the University) and various individual subject-based resource courses.
The website has a course timetable for this term. Most courses do not need to be pre-booked, but note that the Newton Hands-on course must be pre-booked. Fewer courses are offered this term - there will be many more opportunities to attend in future terms. The courses are generally ‘hands-on’ oriented, each person having a PC to use.
Even if you cannot attend the courses, you can still download comprehensive hand-outs which come with most of the courses.
Remember our own User Guide and Resource Guide. The Library staff are always keen to help you with the online resources - or any aspect of using the Library - but they cannot normally devote the time or offer the hands-on training that the UL offers.
The Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist was announced today. The Orange Prize is awarded to women fiction writers published in the UK.
The six shortlisted books are:
- Billie Morgan by Joolz Denby: (Serpent’s Tail) - British 3rd, novel
- Old Filth by Jane Gardam (Chatto & Windus) - British 15th, novel
- The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman (Virago) - American, 3rd novel
- A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka (Viking) - British, 1st novel
- Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy (John Murray) - American, 1st novel
- We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver (Serpent’s Tail) - American, 7th novel
My reaction. for what it’s worth: I’ve vaguely heard of one of them (Jane Gardam)… and I’ve noticed the ‘Ukranian Tractors’ book in the reviews - hard to forget a title like that. The others are way off my radar. But I’m sure that won’t trouble the winner, announced on Tuesday 7 June, who will find herself £30,000 better off.
For more informed comments about the shortlist, see The Guardian: Biker chick is literary chic on Orange shortlist, The Independent: Ukrainian tractors lead race for Orange Prize Debut novelist leads the race for Orange Prize and The Daily Telegraph: Colourful lives of the Orange shortlist novelists.
A new award, The Orange Award for New Writers 2005, celebrating ten years of the Orange Prize, will announce its first shortlist next Monday (25 April). This prize will be awarded during the main Orange Prize for Fiction Award ceremony.
[With thanks to an item in Peter Suber’s Open Access News, the best source of anything to do with the fast-growing Open Access movement, I would like to pass on the following]
An excellent article on the expansion of the Google Print project appeared in TechnologyReview the other day. Called the Google Library Project, it is Google’s ambitious plan to manually scan and digitize millions of books in five of America’s largest libraries plus Oxford University’s Bodleian Library here in the UK (see the Bodleian on Google’s scanning). So, virtually any book that has been published will, one day, be full-text searchable on the web through Google.
The libraries have allowed Google’s own staff to ’set up shop’ on their premises and to install Google’s own top secret high speed book scanning equipment. The Google Library Project will take many years to complete, resulting in millions of books being full text searchable through Google. Effectively, Google is attempting to ‘backdate the internet’ to the beginning of written history! Initially, only books out of copyright and in the public domain are being digitized. Each library will be given a copy of the final results with no strings attached, except that they cannot allow use that hurts Google.
Originally referred to as ‘Project Ocean’, the New York Times somehow got wind of it way ahead of the formal announcement, mentioning it towards the end of a long article about ’search engine wars’ published back in February 2004.
This good introductory article appeared in Information Today soon after the project’s official announcement at the end of November 2004.
A quick round-up of some of this year’s book prizes which are due to announce winners or have recently released shortlists.
The Aventis Prizes for Science Books 2005 has two shortlists - one for adults and one for children - both listing six books. The winner of each list will be announced Thursday 12 May. The general shortlist includes Richard Dawkins’ highly praised The Ancestor’s Tale (evolution looked at in reverse) and Robert Winston’s The Human Mind. Winston also features in the children’s shortlist with What Makes Me, Me?, one of a couple of Dorling Kindersley titles (what? only two DKs this year?), plus the rather topical Leap Through Time: Earthquake by Nicholas Harris.
The winner of The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2005 will be announced shortly. It covers the year’s best foreign fiction available in English translation. The shortlist includes Frédéric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World, an imagining of the unimaginable: what it was like to be in the eponymous restaurant at the top of the World Trade Centre north tower on the morning of 11 September 2001 (or “9/11″). Also Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, a mystical political and wide-ranging novel of ideas set in a snowbound Turkish town. The much-heralded (by Richard and Judy et al) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón did not make it onto the shortlist.
The new Man Booker International Prize, awarded every two years to any author writing fiction in (or translated into) English announced its first longlist. Comprising 18 authors, it includes Philip Roth and John Updike (both American), Ian McEwan (UK), Milan Kundera (Czech, now living in Paris), Stanislaw Lem (Poland), Gabriel García Márquez (Colombia) and Margaret Atwood (Canada). The winning author will be announced in June.
The Orange Prize for Fiction longlist was announced recently, comprising 20 books written by women. The longlist features authors such as Kate Atkinson, Anita Desai and Joyce Carol Oates - however many are relatively unknown (at least to me). The shortlist will be announced Monday 18 April and the winner on Tuesday 7 June.
The CILIP Carnegie Medal for children’s/young people’s fiction and The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal for children’s illustrator. These prizes are awarded by librarians who work closely with books and children. CILIP is the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals. The Carnegie longlist includes Philippa Pearce (a local author who lives in Great Shelford - see our current display in the library) for The Little Gentleman and other well reviewed children’s books such as Philip Pullman’s The Scarecrow and his Servant, Meg Rosoff’s How I Live Now and Michelle Paver’s Wolf Brother. The shortlists for both the CILIP Medals will be released end of April, and the winners announced early July.
