The literary awards program based in Toronto, announces a 2020 shortlist today, with the winner to receive more than US$75,000.
Ingrid Winterbach’s Novel Leaves You Aching for the Dramatic Denouement
Ingrid Winterbach’s new novel translated from the Afrikaans, The Book of Happenstance, leaves the reading waiting for a resolution or dramatic action that never comes.
Review: William Giraldi’s Fantastic Debut Busy Monsters
The fantastic first line of a fantastic first novel: Stunned by love and some would say stupid from too much sex, I decided I had to drive down South to kill a man.
Book Review: The Lake by Banana Yoshimoto (Japan)
By Gwendolyn Dawson The Lake, the latest novel by well-known Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto, is an enigmatic love story told from the first-person perspective of Chihiro, a muralist and “going on thirty” daughter of unmarried parents. Chihiro’s unconventional childhood and the recent death of her mother contribute to her sense of isolation and unrest, and she spends hours staring out …
Book Review: Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
By Gwendolyn Dawson As might be guessed from its title, one of the primary characters (14-year-old Skippy) dies within this novel’s first few pages. After that unexpected death, which interrupts a doughnut-eating contest between roommates, the narrative jumps backwards in time to cover the events leading up to that fateful event. Along the way, Skippy Dies touches on every imaginable component of …
Book Review: Rose Tremain’s Trespass
By Gwendolyn Dawson Beginning with the very first chapter, in which a young girl makes a shocking discovery in a creek while on a school field trip, Trespass overflows with foreboding and suspense. The novel progresses in two alternating story lines. In one, an alcoholic man living in the Cévennes region of southern France is seduced by the money he …
“Connect, Don’t Network”: Author Blog Award Winners Gaiman, Benet on Blogging
By Edward Nawotka “Use your blog to connect. Use it as you. Don’t ‘network’ or ‘promote.’ Just talk,” says author Neil Gaiman, winner of the Twitter category at the inaugural Author Blog Awards given last month in London. Gaiman is among the most popular authors on Twitter, with 1,467,539 followers as of yesterday, May 3. It should also come as …
Review: Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
By Gwendolyn Dawson In Colm Toibin’s latest novel, Brooklyn, young Eilis Lacey leaves the struggling economy of her small hometown in southeast Ireland to forge a new life in Brooklyn, New York. In unadorned prose, Toibin describes the daily struggles and triumphs of Eilis’s life in the unfamiliar, and often inhospitable, urban environment of her new home. In many ways, …
My Untranslatable Novel
Vanina Marsot’s novel about an accidental translator living in Paris is about language — French and American English. But how do you translate a novel about translation?
Accra Provides Mysterious Milieu for Ghanaian-American Novelist
By Kwei Quartey ACCRA, GHANA: About 10 years ago, I wrote a novel set in Africa. An agent to whom I sent the first pages turned it down and told me, “There are two places on earth that no one has the slightest interest in reading about: Afghanistan and Africa.” What a difference a decade makes: Khaled Hosseini’s smash hits …