Autumn is upon us again. It’s the season of Fresher’s week, Halloween, giant back to school ads in Dunnes that still somehow manage to instill fear and piles of crunchy brown leaves on the streets just crying out to be stepped on. But there is one more annual fixture that rears its head around this time of year which is just as exciting as all those inviting leaves and has almost as much cultural impact- the winner of the famous literary award The Man Booker Prize is announced. This year the much-anticipated day is the 6th of October and the shortlist of six authors left in the running has just been released.
The shortlist includes South-African born J. M. Coetzee, who has already won the award twice as well as the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is perhaps the most acclaimed of the authors on the 2009 shortlist but famously also one of the most reclusive. His 2009 nomination is for Summertime, the final book in a trilogy of fictionalised autobiography that began with Boyhood and Youth. Summertime explores the problems of the authors own reclusive nature and is also a window into South African society in the 1970s.
Another previous winner to make this year’s shortlist is Sheffield born A. S. Byatt, who was awarded The Booker in 1990 for her novel Posession. She lectured at different colleges in London before becoming a full time writer and has lived in England all her life. She cites many English influences, including George Eliot and Robert Browning and much of her work explores the social landscape of England, especially at times of change. Her 2009 Booker nominated The Children’s Book looks at the upbringing of the generation who would partake in the First World War by focusing on the family of fictional writer Olive Wellwood.
At 35, Adam Foulds is the youngest writer to make this year´s shortlist. His novel, The Quickening Maze, is self-concsiously literary, being an imagined (though historically accurate) account of the nature poet John Clare´s time at High Beach Asylum and of a young Alfred Tennyson, who lived near the asylum during this period.
Sarah Waters, shortlisted this year for The Little Stranger, is perhaps most famous for her 1999 Victorian lesbian novel Tipping The Velvet, which was adapted into the notorious BBC serial of the same name. She was also nominated for the Booker in 2002 for Fingersmith. The Little Stranger is set in a great household in decline in postwar Britain and deals with secrecy and insanity during this period.
Hilary Mantel is a remarkably well traveled Briton, having spent much time in the Middle East and written extensively about the area. However, her latest, Booker nominated Wolf Hall, is set in Tudor England and looks at Henry VIII´s quest for divorce and, ultimately, an heir. As well as being a political novel, offering sharp insight into England and its corridors of power at a time of tumultuous change, it is a book that explores the personal psychology of its famous characters expertly.
Simon Mawer spent his childhood between England, Cyprus and Malta and now lives in Italy. Yet his first Booker nominated work is set in an entirely different area of Europe- 1930s Czechoslovakia. The Glass Room looks at the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and of the constant flux of history, by focusing on a mixed jew-gentile family, the Landauers and their sometime home, The Landauer Building. The novel describes the changing circumstances that surround the magnificent building as Nazis, Communists and Landauers come and go.
If you liked this summary of the Booker shortlist and can´t get the prize or any other literary matters off your mind, TCD Literary Society is here for you! We´ll have a stand in front square all week and you can pop to our room at the top of House Six (so many stairs….but so worth it) any time during Freshers´Week and the year. We have regular writer´s groups, open readings and a library (which may include books on your course…you never know) and we´´re friendly and lovely and twee as only a literary group can be! Give us a look, what have you got to lose?
