The Butchers: novel set in Irish BSE crisis wins Ondaatje prize Alison Flood
Ruth Gilligan’s literary thriller The Butchers, set in the Irish borderlands during the BSE crisis, has won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje prize for books that “best evoke the spirit of a place”.
Gilligan’s novel beat titles including James Rebanks’ memoir of his family farm, English Pastoral, and Nina Mingya Powles’ poetry collection Magnolia, 木蘭 to the £10,000 prize. The Butchers opens with an ancient curse that decrees that eight men must touch every cow in Ireland as it dies, and follows a group of eight men as they roam rural Ireland in the 1990s, slaughtering the cows of those who still believe in the old ways. The novel unpicks the mysterious death of one of the Butchers, whose corpse is found suspended from a meat hook.
International Booker Prize Announces Its 2021 Shortlist
Of the six authors shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize, four are published in English for the first time.
Image: Booker Foundation
Hughes-Hallett: ‘So Many Different Modes’
You may notice collisions of news from major publishing and book awards at the moment. It’s one of those times of the year when the winners’ announcements, shortlists, longlists, and jury roll-outs all run into each other like tightly smiling competitive guests at a cocktail party, everyone jostling for attention.
And in a news conference prior to the 5 p.m. BST release of the shortlist, organizers of the prize were particularly outspoken about what fresh, challenging books the jury has read in getting to this point, stressing that the shortlisted authors and translators are working in fiction that stretches expectations in frequently arresting ways.
At Night All Blood Is Black, David Diop, translated by Anna Mocschovakis (Pushkin)
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Granta)
When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut, translated by Adrian Nathan West (Pushkin)
The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century, Olga Ravn, translated by Martin Aitken (Lolli)
The award is given “every year for a single book that is translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.” The £50,000 prize is divided equally among the author and translator(s). Shortlisted authors and translators will each receive £1,000. Judges for 2021 are Aida Edemariam, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Neel Mukherjee, Olivette Otele, and George Szirtes. The winner will be announced on June 2, 2021.
Booker International shortlist spans not just globe but outer space Books on six-strong shortlist for £50,000 prize set in Europe, Latin America and space
about an hour ago
As one might expect from a prize with a global reach, the six-strong shortlist for this year’s Booker International Prize for fiction contains multitudes and dazzles with its variety, translated into English from Danish, French, Spanish and Russian.
Two are short story collections, one terrifying tales of magic realism set in contemporary Argentina, the other accounts of defining moments from the history of science. The novels tell of two Senegalese soldiers fighting for France during the first World War; the lives of the crew on a space ship in the 22nd century; an exploration of cultural and personal memory, based on the author’s Jewish family history in Russia; and a tale of rebellion against power and privilege set during the Reformation but inspired by today’s Gilets Jaunes protests.