Weekend Bookends #10
An occasional round up of miscellaneous bookish news you may have missed (and often I missed them too)
Prize for African literature announced
I was so focused on the announcement of the Man Booker Prize long list that I overlooked an announcement about the lesser known Caine Prize for African Writing. This has been running since 2005 and commemorates Sir Michael Caine, the former Chairman of Booker plc who chaired the Booker Prize management committee for almost 25 years. The award celebrates the short story format and is open to writers of African origin . This year’s winner is Okwiri Oduor from Kenya with My Father’s Head, a story about loss and memory as a women working in comes to terms with her father’s death. You can read the winning story and the shortlisted entries on the Caine Prize website. If you prefer to listen rather than read, they are all available as podcasts – click here to get the details.
How far would you travel to get to a Book Club?
There is a person featured in this article who travels 100 kilometres every two weeks just so he can participate in his club. Makes me feel guilty now about all the meetings I missed at the book club which is just 8 miles down the road from my home.
A boost for world literature
Ever since I started my world literature project, I’ve been bemoaning the lack of availability of books by authors from outside the western world. From Los Angeles comes news of a new publisher that is taking some small steps to rectify this. Unnamed Press has made its mission to publish new, international authors who may not fit into the traditional mould. So far they have published works from Estonian, Bangladeshi and Mexican writers. If only the larger companies could follow suit.
And there I was thinking about Michael Caine, the actor…
I am definitely excited to hear about Unnamed Press. I wish there was more spotlight on books set outside the Western World, other than the few that are already popular. I need to check the books they are starting with.
let me know what you think of them Athira, sound of them sound quite unusual
Thanks for the information and the links – I don’t read enough from outside Europe and the US.
I have a choice of book clubs – either 1.6 miles or 11.6 miles – no contest!
It depends on the club whether I would go for the closer option or the 11 mile one. The one further away might have more active discussions for example so making it more worth while Margaret
The 11 mile one is a library run one with a set programme of books, whereas the nearer one is run totally by the members – we can choose the books we want and can vary our reading. We have good discussions – maybe the other group does too, but I tried this one first and am happy with it. A 10 mile difference is not much, I know but there’s no parking nearby whereas I can park outside the door at the nearer group.
The Caine prize is a new one to me and even though I’m not a short story reader I may well go and visit simply to try and compensate for my disappointment over the lack of Commonwealth writers in the Booker list.
I’m not much of a reader of short stories either. They leave me always thinking there must be more. Oddly however I enjoy listening to them so I’m trying to work out how to get these podcasts to come up on my iPod.