|By Benedicte Page
Indian writer Jeet Thayil has won the third DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, worth $50,000, for his debut novel Narcopolis (Faber).
Chair of the prize jury K Satchidandan, praised the “extreme verbal artistry and lyrical intensity” of the winning novel, set in Bombay in the 1970s and also shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
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Sarah Hall
| By Benedicte Page
Sarah Hall and Jean Sprackland have been named the 2012 winners of the Portico Prize for Literature, each receiving £10,000.
Hall [pictured] won the fiction prize for The Beautiful Indifference (Faber) while Sprackland’s Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach (Jonathan Cape) triumphed in non-fiction. It’s a second time Hall has won the prize, which is given biennially; she also won the 2010 award for How To Paint a Dead Man.
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|By Katie Allen
Jeet Thayil’s Man Booker-shortlisted novel Narcopolis (Faber) has reached the shortlist for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature 2013.
Penguin also has a strong showing on the six-strong list, with two Hamish Hamilton titles, Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon and River of Smoke by Amitav Ghosh, both also published by Penguin India. Penguin’s The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam is also shortlisted.
The list is completed by Mohammed Hanif’s Our Lady of Alice Bhatti (Vintage/Random House India) and The Walls of Delhi by Uday Prakash, translated by Jason Grunebaum (UWA Publishing).
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Sebastian Barry
| By Charlotte Williams
Faber author Sebastian Barry has won the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction for his novel, On Canaan’s Side.
The Irish author was presented with the award by its sponsor the Duke of Buccleuch, at a ceremony on Saturday [16th June] at the Brewin Dophin Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland. The prize rewards novels which must be set 60 years ago or more.
The judging panel, which included festival director and chair Alistair Moffat, said: “There was little more than a whisker between On Canaan’s Side and the other five shortlisted novels, but it was its drive, and its sustained power that persuaded us to award the Walter Scott Prize to Sebastian Barry.
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It is not just jacket design that has upped its game in recent years… Victorian letterpress blocks. Photograph: Alamy/Steven Heald
This year for the first time more ebooks were sold than hardbacks. Publishers have responded by bringing out exquisite new releases and revamps of classics.
By Kathryn Hughes
In his recent Booker acceptance speech, Julian Barnes did the usual polite thing of thanking his editors and his agent. But then, just when everyone thought he was done, he veered off in an entirely unexpected direction to pay animated tribute to Suzanne Dean, “the best book designer in town”, who had turned his prize-winning novel into “a beautiful object”. The Sense of an Ending does indeed come clad in a lovely cover, an elegiac visual riff on dandelion clocks, which darkens at the edge to black, an idea of mourning that then runs over the edges of the pages themselves. At least it does in the early editions. Such little touches are both fiddly and expensive (which comes to the same thing) so subsequent reprintings have left off the darkened page ends. It’s a decision, Dean herself admits, that is going to make the first editions of the novel just that little bit more desirable in years to come.
Whatever might be thought of Barnes’s novel, there was wide agreement that his public acknowledgment of the book’s designer was a “moment”, one that needed to be parsed for its implications. And chief among those implications seems to be that judging a book (at least partly) by its cover has become a legitimate thing to do. In addition to Dean at Random House, there is currently a whole slew of art editors, production directors and book designers who are going about their business with a new spring in their step. Nothing raises the spirits more than knowing that people are noticing your work, think it good, and want you to do more.
Publishers have started building their marketing strategies around form rather than content. The Everyman Library, which is coming up to the 20th anniversary of its modern relaunch, makes much of its books’ elegant two-colour case stamping, silk ribbon markers and “European-style” half-round spines. In 2009, to celebrate its 80th birthday, Faber republished a collection of its classic poetry hardbacks illustrated with exquisite wood and lino cuts by contemporary artists. Not to be outdone, Penguin will next year be reissuing 100 classic novels in its revamped English Library series in what its press release describes as “readers’ editions”. What other sort could there be, you might wonder?
| By Charlotte Williams
Faber Academy has launched a three-day self-publishing course, with Faber Academy director Jason Cooper saying that it does not represent a conflict of interests for the publisher.
The course, “Bring Your Book to Market”, will run in February 2012. Author, journalist and social media champion Ben Johncock and writer, blogger and digital self-publishing exponent Catherine Ryan Howard will be the course tutors, with Faber publishing director Hannah Griffiths also giving a one-hour session entitled “Rules for Authors”.
Cooper said: “One of the things with the Faber Academy is that we’ve always tried to maintain a slightly separate mission for it [from Faber], in that it is all about helping writers reach their full potential, we’ve never seen it as a vehicle for publication.
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10.11.11 | Katie Allen
Belfast-born author Lucy Caldwell has won the £30,000 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize, beating Orange Prize-winner Téa Obreht.
Caldwell’s novel The Meeting Point (Faber) won over Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, as well as titles from Annabel Pitcher, Jacob McArthur Mooney and Benjamin Hale.
It is the fourth year of the prize which was founded in 2006 to encourage creative talent in writers under the age of 30. Caldwell was announced the winner at a ceremony last night (9th November), attended by Dylan Thomas’ granddaughter Hannah Ellis.
Jarvis Cocker
12.10.11 | Tom Tivnan
Britpop legend Jarvis Cocker will trade his guitar for a blue pencil as he joins Faber as an editor-at-large in January. The Pulp frontman will work closely with publishing director Lee Brackstone and editorial director Hannah Griffiths in a broad commissioning role.
Earlier this year, Brackstone and Griffiths acquired Cocker’s book of lyrics, Mother, Brother, Lover, which Faber publishes this month.
Brackstone said: “Jarvis felt like a natural fit with the Faber sensibility, both as author and editor, and I’m sure the small list of books he will develop will represent his eccentric and yet popular touch.”
P D James
| By Charlotte Williams
Faber is to publish a new detective novel from P D James which combines a murder investigation with the world and characters of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, revisiting Darcy and Elizabeth six years into their marriage.
Death Comes to Pemberley will be published on 3rd November as an £18.99 hardback.
The book is set in 1803, and the Darcys are happily settled with two sons, with Elizabeth’s sister Jane and her husband Bingley living close by. However, on the night before the annual autumn ball, Elizabeth and Jane’s youngest sister, Lydia Wickham, arrives uninvited, screaming that her husband has been murdered.
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19.09.11 | Charlotte Williams
The world’s richest short story prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, has been awarded to an Irish author for the first time, with Edna O’Brien winning for her collection Saints and Sinners (Faber).
The 2011 jury announced its decision last night (18th September) awarding €35,000 to O’Brien after “much deliberation”. Other authors on the shortlist included Yiyun Li, Alexander MacLeod, Suzanne Rivecca, Valerie Trueblood and Colm Toibin.
The judges said O’Brien’s stories “demonstrate a lustful comfort in the face of the human condition, ranging from days in the last century to the immediate present”.
