It’s the time of the literary year for those who love awards. The past 10 days have seen a spate of lucrative literary gongs, from the world’s richest prize for a work of fiction, the International Impac Dublin Literary Award, through the well-endowed Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, to South Africa’s most financially rewarding awards for fiction and non-fiction.
Irish writer Colm TóibÃn’s The Master took the lion’s share — â,¬100 000 — of the annual Impac Award, beating off nine other shortlisted writers. The judges hailed TóibÃn’s fascinating portrayal of the novelist Henry James as a “patient, beautiful exposure of loss and the price of the pursuit of perfection”.
The Impac is a wonderful example of civic and corporate partnership. Established by the Dublin city council and the United States management firm Impac, it is now in its 11th year. The Impac’s â,¬100 000 make it the most valuable prize for a single work of fiction. Its criteria embrace and encourage world literature: the award is open to novels by writers of any nationality and written in any language, as long as they have been published in English translation.
Notably, TóibÃn is the first Irish winner; he was preceded by, among others, David Malouf (Australia), Nicola Barker (United Kingdom), and Michel Houellebecq (France). Other contenders this year included Jonathan Coe for The Closed Circle, Chris Abani for GraceLand and Ronan Bennett for Havoc in Its Third Year. They, and the other shortlisted finalists, were chosen from a list of 132 titles nominated by 180 libraries in 43 countries.
TóibÃn’s win culminates what might be called The Saga of the Master. Henry James has inspired no fewer than five novels in the past few years: The Master; Emma Tennant’s Felony; David Lodge’s Author, Author; Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty; and South African Michiel Heyns’s The Typewriter’s Tale. Indeed, such was the glut of novels prompted by James in 2004 — The Master, Author, Author and The Line of Beauty came out within months of one another, and Felony was issued in paperback — that, on reflection, Lodge wrote a piece in The Guardian that was headlined “The curse of Henry James”.
Not so for TóibÃn, who told The Guardian that the prize would “buy time” and enable him to embark on his next novel.
US academic James Shapiro took the £30 000 Samuel Johnson Prize for 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, surprisingly beating the hot favourite, Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories. (Bennett had some consolation in the same week when his brilliant play, The History Boys, won six Tony Awards for its current Broadway run.)
Sponsored by BBC4, the Samuel Johnson honours the UK’s best non-fiction, including in its ambit biography, travel, history, the arts and current affairs. Each of the shortlisted writers received £1 000 — probably scant compensation for Bennett, Jerry Brotton (The Sale of the Late King’s Goods); Carmen Callil (Bad Faith); Tony Judt (Postwar); and Tom Reiss (The Orientalist).
And there is more. Lad-lit got an unexpected nod from the Society of Authors when the £10 000 Betty Trask Award went to Utterly Monkey by Nick Laird, the poet who also happens to be married to Zadie Smith, whose novel On Beauty won the £30 000 Orange Prize a fortnight ago.
South Africa registered a notable and deserved international success when Corina van der Spoel’s Boekehuis in Melville, Johannesburg, was voted one of 50 unique bookshops in the world by members of the International Booksellers Federation, the non-governmental global organisation of booksellers’ associations and booksellers. Boekehuis will feature in a special calendar, 50 Unique Bookshops — 2007 and 2008, which will be unveiled at this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair.
Finally, there were the Sunday Times Fiction Prize, won by Andrew Brown for Coldsleep Lullaby, and the Alan Paton Non-Fiction Award, shared by Adam Levin for Aidsafari and Edwin Cameron for Witness to Aids.