An early favourite, from the 'Tragic's' perspective, must be Dinaw Mengestu's (left) debut novel Children of the Revolution, published as The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears in the United States. The book was shortlisted for the US National Book Award "5 Under 35" last year, won the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (LA Times Awards) and the 2007 UK Guardian First Book Award 2007. If the book was race horse it would be a short-price- but as we all know Book Award World is not a race track.....
Whilst not familiar with the work, Tragic rather likes the description of Caroline Bird's poetry short listed work, In Trouble Came to the Turnip, "Bird’s poems are ferociously vital, fantastical, sometimes violent, almost always savagely humorous and self-mocking"- sounds promising.
Also good to see a prize that mixes-up narrative works and poetry etc. Could save a lot of time in all awards if we just threw everything into the same melting pot...
The shortlisted books are:
- Caroline Bird: Trouble Came to the Turnip
- Ceridwen Dovey: Blood Kin
- Edward Hogan: Blackmoor
- Nam Le: The Boat
- Dinaw Mengestu: Children of the Revolution
- Ross Raisin: God’s Own Country
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