2024-08-01 03:06:50
The adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the point of view of the escaped black slave Jim or the novel of a talented Native American novelist are on the list of works that can win the Booker Prize for the best novel this year. This is reported by the AP agency.
“There is no unifying element,” comments writer Edmund De Waal, who chairs this year’s jury, on the selection of nominations. “And that’s because we need fiction for various reasons. To refresh us, to comfort us, to take us away from ourselves and lead us back again, but transformed and interconnected. And of course we need fiction to entertain us,” he adds.
Six of the 13 nominated titles were written by Americans, three by Britons. Czech readers could even get to know the majority of the authors earlier.
This is the case of Tommy Orange, a young American of Indian origin, whose novel Tam Tam was published three years ago by the Vyšehrad publishing house. Now, the same Oakland-born novelist with roots in the Cheyenne and Arapaho nations has been nominated for the Wandering Stars saga. In it, some characters from Tam Tam appear again, for example, the fourteen-year-old boy Orvil Reddick, who is deeply interested in his Indian origin, his younger brothers Loother and Lony, or the fifty-year-old Cheyenne Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield.
Last year, Czech readers discovered sixty-seven-year-old Percival Everett, who teaches English literature at the University of Southern California, thanks to the novel Southern Trees Bear Strange Fruit. He can now win the Booker Prize for a novel called James, which loosely retells the events of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but from the perspective of a black slave, Jim. Director Steven Spielberg’s company recently acquired the rights to a possible adaptation of this book, Variety.com wrote.
Another nominee is Rachel Kushner, who could have already won the Booker Prize with her previous novel Mars Nightclub. It was published by Argo. Now the 55-year-old native of Oregon can receive the same award for the yet-to-be-released espionage-tinged novelty Creation Lake. It tells the story of an American woman who manages to infiltrate French anarchists.
Two novels have already been published in Czech by Richard Powers, who was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2018 and 2021. He received a third nomination this year for Playground, which takes place on an island in Polynesia, whose inhabitants are to vote on whether humanity will send a flying city to the Pacific Ocean .
The other two Americans in the nominations are Rita Bullwinkel for the women’s boxing story Headshot and Canadian-American novelist Claire Messud with the prose about French colonialism This Strange Eventful History. In the new millennium, this author’s novels The Woman from the Upper Floor and The Emperor’s Children Have No Clothes were published in Czech translation.
Canadian poet and novelist Anne Michaels, whose book The Winter Crypt was published by Odeon in 2009 and who visited the Prague Writers’ Festival, was chosen by the jury for a novel called Held. New York-born British author of Libyan origin Hisham Matar, whose book was published in Czech in 2009 called In the Land of Men, may succeed with the novel My Friends. It deals with a real event from 1984, when a 25-year-old policewoman supervising a peaceful demonstration of opponents of then-dictator Muammar Gaddafi was shot in front of the Libyan embassy in London.
For the first time, a Dutch author, Yael van der Wouden, was among the nominees for her prose The Safekeep.
The Irish-Canadian novelist Colin Barrett, Samantha Harvey from Great Britain, Australian Charlotte Wood and Sarah Perry, who have already published three novels since 2018, are closing the list. It has now been nominated for the Booker Prize with the new Enlightenment.
The award, founded in 1969, is one of the most prestigious literary awards in the world. The shortlist of nominations will be presented by the jury on September 16, and the winners will be presented on November 12 at a gala evening in London. Together with the prize, he will receive 50 thousand pounds, in conversion about 1.5 million crowns.
So far, Salman Rushdie or novelists Margaret Atwood and Hilary Mantel have won the Booker Prize. Until 2014, it was intended only for natives of England, Ireland and the countries of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Now all novels written in English and published in the United Kingdom can receive it, including, for example, texts by American writers. According to the New York Times, this is a frequent target of criticism from the British.
Last year, the Irish writer Paul Lynch rejoiced with the dystopian novel Prophet Song, the year before that the Sri Lankan Šehan Karunatilaka with a satirical look at the civil war there called The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.
Nominated for the 2024 Booker Prize
Colin Barrett – Wild Houses
Rita Bullwinkelová – Headshot
Percival Everett – James
Samantha Harveyová – Orbital
Rachel Kushner – Creation Lake
Hisham Matar – My Friends
Claire Messudová – This Strange Eventful History
Anne Michaels – Held
Tommy Orange – Wandering Stars
Sarah Perryová – Enlightenment
Richard Powers – Playground
Yael van der Woudenová – The Safekeep
Charlotte Woodová – Stone Yard Devotional