Recommended Reading
Orange Prize for Fiction 2010
Barbara Kingsolver wins with The Lacuna
"The Lacuna" is the heartbreaking story of a man's search for safety of a man torn between the warm heart of Mexico and the cold embrace of 1950s McCarthyite America. Born in the U.S. and reared in Mexico, Harrison Shepherd is a liability to his social-climbing flapper mother, Salome. Making himself useful in the household of the famed Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and exiled Bolshevik leader Lev Trotsky, young Shepherd inadvertently casts his lot with art and revolution. A violent upheaval sends him north to a nation newly caught up in World War II. In the mountain city of Asheville, North Carolina he remakes himself in America's hopeful image. But political winds continue to throw him between north and south, in a plot that turns many times on the unspeakable breach - the lacuna - between truth and public presumption. A gripping story of identity, loyalty and the devastating power of accusations to destroy innocent people, "The Lacuna" is as deep and rich as the New World.
Orange Award for New Writers 2010
Irene Sabatini wins with The Boy Next Door
As Zimbabwe breaks free of British colonial rule, young Lindiwe Bishop encounters violence at close hand when her white neighbour is murdered. But this is a domestic crime, apparently committed by the woman's stepson, Ian, although he is released from prison surprisingly quickly. Intrigued, Lindiwe strikes up a covert friendship with the mysterious boy next door, until he abruptly departs for South Africa. Years later, Ian returns to find Lindiwe has been hiding her own secret. It is to bring them closer together, but also test a relationship already contending with racial prejudice and the hostility of Lindiwe's mother. And as their country slides towards chaos, the couple's grip on happiness becomes ever more precarious. Vividly evoking the traumatic history of a nation once brimming with promise, THE BOY NEXT DOOR tells an engrossing, unpredictable story of love against the odds, and of the shadows cast by the past.
Man Booker Prize 2009
The winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize was Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. (please see Reader Zone page for more information)
The thirteen longlisted authors and titles are:
The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt
Summertime - J. M. Coetzee
The Quickening Maze - Adam Foulds
How to Paint a Dead Man - Sarah Hall
The Wilderness - Samantha Harvey
Me Cheeta - James Lever
Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
The Glass Room - Simon Mawer
Not Untrue and Not Unkind - Ed O'Loughlin
Heliopolis - James Scudamore
Brooklyn - Colm Toibin
Love and Summer - William Trevor
The Little Stranger - Sarah Waters
