The International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award
May seems to be a big month for book awards, several prestigious ones have been announced, there's been shortlists galore and just this week Café Nero announced it was starting a new awards (hopefully to replace the much missed Costa award). However just this week two prizes were given out in awards I follow more closely - and to the books I'd have picked which is unheard of!
The International Booker Prize went to Time Shelter by the Bulgaria author Georgi Gospodinov and his translator Angela Rodel (Orion books).
I was about three quarters of the way through this book when it won and I enjoyed it greatly - indeed it was the one that leapt off the shortlist to me initially and the one I made sure to read first when my library reservations came in.
It deals with the idea of recreating rooms and apartments from different eras in time to help those with dementia and other memory problems. These are such a success that people run with the idea at ever bigger scales with scary (but all too believable) results. For me the very end of the book was a little out of balance with the main part but it was still a great read and I am very pleased that it won.
The Dublin Literary Award was awarded to Marzahn Mon Amour by Katja Oskamp and her translator from the German Jo Heinrich (Peirene Press).
I read this book last year and reviewed it here, it also made my 'best of 2022' list and I was very pleased that this won from the shortlist.
The Dublin Literary Award is very different from most as all the books on the longlist are nominated by libraries from around the world, including Norfolk Libraries. We put Lessons in Chemistry forward this year (along with a few libraries) and while we made the longlist it got no further. One year we'll predict the winner!
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