Giller Prize 2006 (Short List)

Now that we have the Man Booker (winner Kiran Desai) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (which went to Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk) out of the way and before we receive the nominees for the Governer General's Award on Oct 16, we can concentrate on Canada's Booker known as the Giller Prize. I have resurrected a post from 04 Oct with the shortlist - the winner will be announced on Nov 7. I am sure there will be several blogs discussing books on the shortlist, for the moment I know Michelle @ ipublishpress will be doing some reviews and maybe Kate @ Kate's Book Blog.

Let me know if there are others, thanks.

Now to the post from Oct 04

As a Canadian book blogger, I would be terribly remiss if I didn't post the short list for Canada's Giller Prize. The Giller Prize is Canada's most prestigious book prize and it aims to award excellence in Canadian English language - literature. The winner of the the literary prize stands to receive $40,000 and the runners-up get $2,500 each.

According to the Globe and Mail, the five candidates are largely unknowns (rookies in two cases) published mainly by small or medium-sized presses. Gasps were heard as the nominees were announced.

Moreover, two of the five shortlisted titles are French-to-English translations, and two are collections of short stories. Traditionally, the Giller has been the province of established anglophone novelists such as Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler and Richard Wright affiliated with larger publishers such as McClelland & Stewart, Doubleday Canada and Random House.

The five nominated books are: De Niro's Game, a debut novel by Montreal's Rawi Hage, published by Toronto's House of Anansi Press;




Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, a debut collection of short stories by Torontonian Vincent Lam, published by Doubleday;



The Perfect Circle, a novel and the second work of fiction by Montreal-born Pascale Quiviger, first published in French in 2004 (for which it won the Governor-General's prize for francophone fiction), and now in an English translation by Sheila Fischman for Toronto's Cormorant Books;



The Immaculate Conception, a novel by Montrealer Gaétan Soucy that was first published in French in 1994 and now in an English translation by Lazer Lederhendler for Anansi;



Home Schooling, a collection of eight stories by Nanaimo's Carol Windley, published by Cormorant.



Save for "Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures", I haven't read any of the books on this particular shortlist ( I do plan on reading "De Niro's Game", but for the rest I'll just read Kate's reviews)