David Malouf Nominated for Man Booker International Prize
Zora Sanders
March 30
We are thrilled to hear the news today that David Malouf is among the nominees for the Man Booker International Prize 2011.
David’s contribution to Australian fiction is well known, but it is great to see him being recognised internationally for his significant contribution to the art of fiction writing.
The Man Booker International is not awarded for a specific work, but for an author’s entire body of work and their contribution to fiction as a whole. I spoke to him a little while ago about what such a nomination means to him:
“On a shortlist, what matters to you is the other people on the shortlist. A lot of the people on this list, as you would expect, I didn’t really know… the ones I do know, I am very impressed to be up there with them.”
Previous nominees include luminaries of world literature like Philip Roth, Doris Lessing, Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, John Updike, as well as many authors who remain less well known in the English speaking world. David praised the international scope of the prize, and the quality of the nominees saying:
“This is a prize where you wouldn’t always expect to know everyone…the judges really have to do an extraordinary job. It’s a very interesting thing.”
Of course, with any prize, there’s the question of how you deal with the outcome, good or bad. Over the course of his career David Malouf has received many prizes, and even more nominations for his work, including a nomination for the regular Man Book in 1993. On dealing with prizes, David said:
“The thing I think, as a writer, is that you have to insulate yourself against being too pleased if you win and too disappointed if you don’t.”
We offer our warmest congratulations to David and will have our fingers crossed on the 18th of May when the winner is announced at the Sydney Writers' Festival.
Our Friends
- Overland
- Alien Onion
- Ampersand Duck
- Andrew McDonald
- A Pair of Ragged Claws
- Arts Victoria
- Australia Council for the Arts
- Ben Eltham
- Bookshow blog
- CAL
- City of Tongues
- Crikey
- darkly wise, rudely great
- David Astle
- Elmo Keep Does Stuff
- The Ember
- Fly the Falcon blog
- Going Down Swinging
- Griffith Review
- Hackpacker
- Harvest
- HEAT
- Island
- Killings blog
- Literary Minded
- Lorraine Crescent
- Lynden Barber
- Mandy Ord
- Marcus Westbury
- Matilda
- Meanland
- Melbourne University Publishing
- Mel Campbell
- The Monthly
- Musings of an Inappropriate Woman
- Oslo Davis
- Paul Callaghan
- Read, Think, Write
- Sleepers Publishing
- Sorrow at Sills Bend
- SPLOG
- Tom Cho
- Virgule
- Wet Ink
- Wheeler Centre