November 22, 2013

On Wednesday evening, the winners of the 2013 National Book Award were announced at a ceremony at Cipriani in Manhattan. The winners (drumroll, please) were: Fiction: The Good Lord Bird, by… Read more »

Awards and ceremonies

Salman Rushdie, Ian Rankin and Joanne Harris amongst those recognised in the Queen’s birthday honours list — Nikki Griffiths
Geetanjali Shree becomes first Indian winner of International Booker Prize — Nikki Griffiths
Footballer Marcus Rashford's mum accepts Book of the Year award on his behalf — Tom Clayton
Pulitzer winners and finalists offer new perspectives — Julianna Yablans

Is it the year of short stories or 900 page novels?

Kirsten Reach

This year was a year of extremes: 2013 yielded unprecedented sales numbers for George Saunders’s story collection and an unfathomable advance for a 900 page debut by Garth Risk Hallberg.… Read more »

Dear Hull, you might be City of Culture 2017, but you’ve completely misread Larkin

Zeljka Marosevic

Dear Hull, Congratulations on being named the UK’s next “City of Culture” for 2017. I know you’re thrilled, and so you should be. It really takes something to bounce back… Read more »

J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI files on Sartre and Camus

Claire Kelley

In Prospect Magazine this week, Andy Martin writes about the files that FBI director J. Edgar Hoover kept on both Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus after 1945. Sartre was involved in… Read more »

80 years after publication, George Orwell’s Burmese Days wins Burma’s highest literary prize

Julia Fleischaker

Writing in The Irrawaddy, Kyaw Phyo Tha reports that the Burmese Ministry of Information named the new translation of Burmese Days the winner of the 2012 National Literary Award’s informative… Read more »

Melville House Books

McBride, Packer win big at the 2013 National Book Awards

Alex Shephard