Latest news with #Bookerprize
Hindustan Times
24-05-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
Book Box: Heart Lamp wins the Booker - Now what?
Dear Reader, A few days ago, I received a text message from my student Anisa. 'It's great that Heart Lamp has won a big literary prize. But now I have a problem. It's one more book everybody is talking about, one more book I feel compelled to read. Every month there seems to be a new literary prize in the news - the Booker prize, the International Booker, the Pulitzer, the Woman's prize, the Nobel Prize. Then there's the JCB prize, the Crossword prize - the list of prizes is as long as Hanuman's tail! Honestly, I am confused. There is all this talk of how we shouldn't just be swayed by prizes. And then when a book wins a prize, everyone lines up to read it. A few years ago, I picked up a book that had won this same prize. It was so slow, and hard to understand. Nothing happened - maybe it was too 'arty' for me. I stopped after 40 pages but I felt like a loser giving up, I felt there was something wrong with me that I didn't 'get' the book that a distinguished jury had given the prize to. And then there are so many prizewinning books that are emotionally triggering, like Shuggie Bain or Prophet's Song - reading them feels depressing. What is it about these prizewinning books, and why do they feel like a pressure for me? Is it wrong of me to want to enjoy my reading? And is it weird that I feel burdened by having to read these prize winning books ? And do you think I should read Heart Lamp ? Please help. Your (confused) student Anisa Dear Anisa, I get your dilemma. The list of literary prizes is long. What's interesting though is that each prize has its own personality - the Pulitzer for instance is purely American, the Nobel Prize is given for an author's body of work and not for a single book. The International Booker prize is special because it picks literature in translation. Also Read | Book Box | Reading without rules It's different - and not just because it has been won by Indian books twice already - Tomb of Sand (2022) and Heart Lamp (2025). Last year the prize went to a German novella, the year before to a Bulgarian novel. This year's win means that Heart Lamp, written by Banu Mushtaq and translated from Kannada by Deepa Bhasthi, will now be in the international spotlight. This means these slice-of-life stories, with the real life struggles of Muslim women in Karnataka will now find their way to bookstores around the world - the Strand in New York, Foyles and Waterstones in London, the large chains and small independent bookstores all over the world. This also means that India will be seen in a more nuanced way, in terms of quietly courageous women and not just in terms of a caricatured version of a rich woman exploiting her poor driver, and sending him to jail for her own rash driving, as happens in the story of the The White Tiger, the 2008 Booker prizewinner. So here's my take - You don't have to read every prizewinner—prizes are just one more way of curating books, of bringing certain titles to your notice, titles you may not have come across otherwise. So read the description, and a review or two, and only if the prizewinning book speaks to you, give it a try. Maybe intersperse this book with lighter fun reads - because reading is above all a pleasure and we want it to stay that way. Heart Lamp offers a chance to see the world through a new lens—but only if you're ready for it. If you do pick it up, here's three things to consider 1. Maybe begin with reading just one story. You could start with Stones for Shaista Mahal. Or dip into the centre with Fire Rain, with the story of the maulvi and the discarded wife. Or with the title story. No life is too small to be worthy of notice, no story is too small to tell, say these selected short stories. 2. Read Heart Lamp to see how powerful fiction can be in giving voice to the powerless and how a story can bring small moments of quiet courage into the spotlight. 3. Be part of a global conversation with readers all over the world - we may be different but here's how we live and love. In a world that increasingly tries to divide us, here is where we can live inside each other's minds, if only for a few pages. (Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya's Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or reading dilemmas, write to her at sonyasbookbox@ The views expressed are personal)
Times
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Got a book idea? Write first three pages and you could win £75,000
An aspiring novelist is set to win £75,000 — for writing as few as 900 words. A new book prize has been launched for those 'overlooked by the publishing industry', with applicants needing to submit just the first three pages of a planned novel. The winner will then be supported for a year to develop their three pages into a full-blown novel. However, even if that full-length work reaches the peak of the English language literary fiction world and wins the Booker prize, it would only secure the author £50,000. The Next Big Story competition has been launched by The Novelry, a creative writing school which has recruited a judging panel including Yann Martel, the former Booker Prize winner. Louise Dean, an author and
The Guardian
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Alastair Niven obituary
Alastair Niven, who has died aged 81, felt that he had spent his whole life 'in one long conversation'. The settings changed, but the dialogue – and the connections it forged – went on. The foremost literary administrator and diplomat of his time, he opened up the Arts Council, the British Council and other bodies to the creative energies of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and their diasporic communities in the UK. Later the principal of a royal foundation in Windsor, he could appear as a paladin of the establishment. But he was always more of a gate-opener – and pathfinder – than gatekeeper. Ben Okri, one of many authors who valued his support, found in Niven a unique 'bridge between cultures, between eras, and between different shores of the arts'. Bernardine Evaristo, another friend and colleague, knew not a colourless bureaucrat but a 'fantastic advocate' for literature, 'wise and compassionate, brilliantly knowledgable and beautifully eloquent'. Few behind-the-scenes figures have done so much to nurture the stars of the show. Niven felt himself to be 'an institutional person' who thrived on running things. He did so, decisively, at the Arts Council. Between 1987 and 1997, he transformed its neglected literature department into a motor for cultural change. Black and Asian British writing became a priority for the first time – not without resistance. The poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley challenged the Arts Council in court over bursaries for minority ethnic authors. At Ted Hughes's prompting, support also went to creative-writing courses at the Arvon Foundation. Niven backed magazines that ranged from the London Review of Books to Wasafiri, the journal for international writing, with a remit that matched his passions, founded by Susheila Nasta. She found him 'generous, astute, urbane, knowledgable and wise' over many years. He also funded the new British Centre for Literary Translation in Norwich after 'a kind of mad professor' solicited his aid. That was the great WG (Max) Sebald, whose friendship became 'one of the privileges' of Niven's life. Niven judged the Booker prize in 1994 (when James Kelman won) and created the biennial David Cohen prize to reward a British or Irish literary career. When he phoned VS Naipaul, the first recipient, with the good news, the curmudgeonly author first snapped at Niven but, hearing of the £30,000 purse, apologised with the excuse that 'I have one of my migraines today'. Niven judged many other awards, globe-trotted from conference to conference, and could look like a consummate insider-fixer. But his mission to secure the wellbeing of writers never wavered. Evaristo considered him equally effective 'in the boardroom', as a champion of once-marginalised literatures, or 'at the bar', telling tales. Born in Edinburgh, Niven came from a Scottish family; one grandfather had been Edinburgh University's professor of Greek, the other a leading engineer. His mother, Betty (nee Mair), and father, Harold Niven, had known each other from childhood but their fractious marriage (Niven later feared) was 'doomed from the start'. At first a junior officer in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Harold joined the City of London police. The family settled in Denmark Hill, south London. Their father's frustrated anger and their mother's illness marked the frugal postwar upbringing of Alastair and his two brothers. Alastair did well at Dulwich college, where he developed talents for both acting and debating. In his alphabetically arranged class, for a while he sat next to and befriended Michael Ondaatje, the future author of The English Patient. At Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, he was taught by the poets Donald Davie and JH Prynne, and continued to act. Niven recalled a Sliding Doors moment, when his life changed course. In autumn 1965, he saw by chance on a college board a notice inviting applications for Commonwealth Scholarships in African countries. He applied, travelled to Ghana, and so inaugurated a lifelong commitment to African – and, later, other postcolonial – literatures and their authors. At the University of Ghana's Legon campus outside Accra, where his MA led to a lectureship, he not only studied the new literature of Africa but got to know its makers. Chinua Achebe, a giant of that generation, became a cherished friend. Niven met Helen Trow, then a VSO volunteer, in Ghana, and they married in 1970. He loved the country, and was even 'enstooled' as a warrior sub-chief of the Osorase people. But academic commitments (and a PhD project) led him to a lectureship at Leeds University and then, until 1978, in the innovative English department at Stirling. There he hosted African and Asian writers and fashioned pioneering courses in what was then known as Commonwealth literature. He wrote studies of DH Lawrence and the Indian novelists Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao, both of whom he knew. Anxious not to get stuck in an academic rut, Niven took a risk when he became director-general of the shakily funded Africa Centre in 1978. It paid off. In Covent Garden, he presided over a ferment of creativity and controversy. 'Slightly sad' or tipsy exiles, often from South Africa or soon-to-be Zimbabwe, would plot their nations' transformations at the bar. The centre turned into a hub of talk, hope, art, poetry and dreams. Niven befriended writers, artists, activists; he thought that someone just like the visiting trade unionist Cyril Ramaphosa should lead South Africa. Today, Ramaphosa does. For Okri, one of many he assisted, Niven guided the centre through a 'magic phase' as he made it 'an oasis for the African diaspora' and 'a place of reinvention for comrades and artists'. Tired but fulfilled, in 1984 Niven left for freelance endeavours, mostly with Commonwealth connections. He then assisted the head of the Association of Commonwealth Universities and held a fellowship at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. He and Helen had two children, Isabella and Alex, and moved to Woburn Sands, near the headquarters of the Open University, where Helen held senior managerial posts. After his change-making decade at the Arts Council, his next job, at the British Council, as director of literature from 1997 until 2001, felt like a 'postscript', and tested Niven's loyalty to institutions. The organisation was battered by funding cuts and hamstrung by Foreign Office interference. He came across evidence of 'casual racism' among staff, and weathered a major storm after a council officer's wife racially insulted an eminent Black British author during a dinner in Frankfurt. After the Iranian fatwa, Niven had consented when the council removed Salman Rushdie from a display about modern British fiction he devised, in a version destined for Muslim countries. That made him feel 'dishonourable'. Cumberland Lodge, which he led from 2001 to 2013, proved far more congenial. Based at a 17th-century mansion in Windsor Great Park, the former King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Foundation of St Catharine owes its origin to the royal family's interest in a 1943 book by Amy Buller about the reasons behind young Germans' susceptibility to nazism. Ahead of its time in challenging extremism and polarisation, the foundation's conference and education programme expanded under Niven's energetic leadership. The Lodge hosted sessions for UK and overseas students and gatherings of professionals, from chief constables to museum curators. A firm believer in monarchy as 'the glue which binds British society', Niven relished support from his royal patrons. In 2012, he became a lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order – in the monarch's gift – after his OBE in 2001. Niven had a final, occasionally bruising, stint as literary diplomat while president of the faction-ridden writers' organisation English PEN between 2003 and 2007. He kept up his varied roles as advocate, adviser and mentor in literature and education, from the Caine prize for African writing to the Commonwealth Scholarships scheme. He and Helen returned to London, to a house in Kennington where the 'occasional gunshot' among local drug-dealers failed to dent Niven's pleasure in their family, in art and drama, and in foreign travel. His memoir In Glad Or Sorry Hours, published in 2021, illuminates not just a career but an age. In the same year the Royal Society of Literature awarded him its Benson medal for career achievement. He is survived by Helen, Isabella and Alex. Alastair Neil Robertson Niven, administrator, scholar and writer, born 25 February 1944; died 26 March 2025
The Guardian
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on climate fiction: no longer the stuff of sci-fi
No novelist should ignore the climate emergency, Paul Murray, author of the bestselling novel The Bee Sting, told the Observer last year: 'It is the unavoidable background for being alive in the 21st century.' In recognition of the vital role of literature in responding to the Anthropocene moment, this week the inaugural shortlist was announced for the Climate Fiction prize. The five novels include Orbital by Samantha Harvey, set during one day on the International Space Station and the winner of last year's Booker prize; time-travelling romcom The Ministry of Time from debut novelist Kaliane Bradley; eco-thriller Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen; And So I Roar, about a young girl in Nigeria, by Abi Daré; and a story of migrants in an abandoned city in Téa Obreht's The Morningside. All the shortlisted authors are women. Climate fiction is not new. Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam dystopian trilogy, Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic The Road, Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour and Richard Power's Pulitzer-prize-winning The Overstory are just some of the landmark literary novels to have taken on the crisis. Science fiction, inevitably, has become the genre of ecological catastrophe, with hits like Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future (Barack Obama was a fan), which opens in 2025 with all the inhabitants of a small Indian town dying in a heatwave. The late Ursula K Le Guin wrote that the job of sci-fi was 'to extrapolate imaginatively from current trends and events to a near-future that's half prediction, half satire'. The job of the realist novel is to reflect the world in which we live. For a long time, the possibilities of environmental breakdown were largely considered too wild for the realism. As a result, climate fiction hasn't been taken seriously enough. In The Great Derangement in 2016, Amitav Gosh argued that the failure of so many novelists, including himself, to address the most urgent issue of the age was part of a broader cultural failure at the heart of the climate crisis itself. Freakish weather events are no longer the stuff of speculative fiction – 'global weirding' is upon us. What was once dubbed 'cli-fi' is simply contemporary fiction. Ecological anxiety is as much a part of the fictional worlds of a young generation of novelists like Sally Rooney as the internet and mobile phones. The novels on the Climate Fiction prize shortlist do not conform to dystopian stereotypes. Some aren't explicitly about the crisis. Some are even hopeful. Far from being a portrait of a world ravaged by disasters, Orbital, for example, is a hymn to the awe-inspiring beauty of our planet. It could be argued that having a Booker prize winner on the shortlist suggests there is no need for a specific award, which might marginalise climate fiction as a niche genre. There is no shortage of literary gongs. The Wainwright prize, set up in 2014 to celebrate the best nature books, now includes an award for writing on global conservation. Yet awards amplify the message and reach of books that might otherwise be overlooked. Scientists have been warning about global heating's dire consequences for decades. Governments and industry haven't listened. Now novelists are taking up the challenge. Stories can create an impact far greater than data alone. They can inspire change. In a world where reality has become stranger than fiction, this new prize is necessary and important. There is no bigger story.
The Guardian
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
What links doorbell, Bath bun and nice-looking? The Saturday quiz
1 Which star-crossed lovers had a son called Astrolabe?2 What was stolen from Methodist Central Hall, Westminster, on 20 March 1966?3 Which Disney princess is named after a vegetable?4 What is claimed to be buried in Docksway landfill in Newport, Wales?5 Jennie, Jisoo, Lisa and Rosé make up which group?6 In the night sky, what is scintillation?7 Which gem is made from a type of coal?8 Which Booker prize winner comes from a samurai family?What links: 9 Harald Hardrada; James IV; Mary, Queen of Scots; Napoleon III?10 Cumberland; Glamorgan; Gloucester; Lincolnshire; Manchester?11 Ball, clubs, hoop, ribbon and rope?12 Death's cloak; Hades' helmet; Sauron's ring?13 All sad, TX; device porn, RI; dottier, MI; organ ache, AK; salvages, NV?14 3 or 11 (1/18); 4 or 10 (1/12); 5 (1/9); 7 (1/6)?15 Bath bun; doorbell; irrepressible; nice-looking; outsider; sympathizer (in the OED)? 1 Peter Abelard and Héloïse.2 Fifa World Cup trophy.3 Rapunzel (German name for lamb's lettuce).4 Hard drive with 8,000 bitcoin.5 Blackpink.6 Twinkling of stars.7 Jet.8 Kazuo Ishiguro.9 Foreign monarchs who died in England: Norway; Scotland; Scotland; France.10 Types of UK sausage.11 Apparatus used in rhythmic gymnastics.12 Make the wearer invisible: Harry Potter; Greek myth; Lord of the Rings.13 Anagrams of US cities and state abbreviation: Dallas, Texas; Providence, Rhode Island; Detroit, Michigan; Anchorage, Alaska; Las Vegas, Nevada.14 Probabilities of rolling totals with two six-sided dice.15 Words with first recorded usages in the writings of Jane Austen.
