Authors chase $93,000 prize
AUSTRALIAN Jewish author David Malouf has been named as a finalist for the 2011 Man International Booker Prize, a £60,000 ($93,000) British award for writing.
Another Jewish writer, American Philip Roth, is among the 13 authors on the short list for the prize, which will be announced at the Sydney Writers’ Festival on May 18.
Unlike the long-running annual Booker Prize for fiction – which was won last year by British Jewish author Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question – the Man International Booker Prize was established in 2005 and is awarded biennially to any author who writes or is published in English, recognising a writer’s overall work rather than a single book.
Malouf was born in Brisbane in 1934. His father’s family came to Australia in the 1880s from Lebanon and his mother’s Jewish family from London just before World War I.
After graduating from the University of Queensland, Malouf left Australia and lived in Britain from 1959-68 where he worked as a teacher. He returned to teach English at the University of Sydney, where he stayed until 1977.
Malouf has won numerous prizes for his work, including the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for An Imaginary Life in 1979, The Age Book of the Year Award in 1982 for Fly Away Peter, and the Miles Franklin Award in 1991 for The Great World.
Remembering Babylon won the NSW Premier’s Literary Award in 1993, and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His collections of short stories include Dream Stuff (2000) and Every Move You Make (2006). His short stories were collected and published in one volume, The Complete Stories in 2007.
His latest books are Revolving Days: Selected Poems (2008) and Ransom (2009), a novel inspired by a part of Homer’s Iliad.
The 77-year-old Sydney author divides his time between living in Australia and Tuscany, Italy.
Roth, 78, who won the Pulitzer Prize for American Pastoral in 1998, had his 31st book Nemesis published last year.
Best known as the author of Portnoy’s Complaint and The Plot Against America, he has won several prestigious awards, including America’s National Book Award twice.
He was a finalist for the Man Booker International Prize in 2005 and 2007.
The other finalists for the Man Booker International Prize 2011 are Wang Anyi (China), Juan Goytisolo (Spain), James Kelman (UK), John le Carré (UK), Amin Maalouf (Lebanon), Dacia Maraini (Italy), Rohinton Mistry (India/Canada), Philip Pullman (UK), Marilynne Robinson (USA), Su Tong (China) and Anne Tyler (USA).
However, le Carré, who published his first novel in 1961, has asked for his name to be withdrawn from the nominations.
REPORT: Danny Gocs
PHOTO: Philip Roth
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