Greene’s book in run for book of century
British writer Graham Greene’s The Heart of The Matter has been shortlisted for the best book of the century by the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, which is Britain’s oldest literary award.
The other books on the shortlist for Best of the James Tait Black in fiction award include Angela Carter’s Nights At The Circus, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Muriel Spark’s Mandlebaum Gate, James Kelman’s A Disaffection, and Crossing The River by Caryl Phillips.
The shortlist has been chosen from the books that have won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, founded in 1919, to mark the 250th anniversary of English literature study at the University of Edinburgh. They are the only awards of their kind to be presented by a university.
It is the only major British book award to be judged by scholars and students and is administer ed by the School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures at the Edinburgh University.
The James Tait Black Memorial Prize is awarded annually for the best novel and best biography published during the previous 12 months. The winners of the wto awards win £10,000 each.
This year’s winners were American writer Padgett Powell for his book, You and I and Fiona McCarthy for her book on the British artist and designer Edward Burne-Jones, The Last Pre-Raphaelite: Edward Burne-Jones and the Victorian Imagination.
The six-book shortlist for the special prize was chosen by English scholars and students of literature at the Edinburgh University. The final winner of the special prize will be announced at a special function in December.
The previous winners of the prize include D.H. Lawrence for The Lost Girl, E.M. Forster for A Passage to India, Salman Rushdie for Midnight’s Children, Zadie Smith for White Teeth, Jonathan Franzen for The Corrections and Ian McEwan for Saturday.
Aldous Huxley (After Many A Summer Dies The Swan), C. P. Snow (The New Men and The Masters in sequence), Evelyn Waugh (Men At Arms), William Golding (Darkness Visible), John Le Carré (The Honourable Schoolboy), Nadine Gordimer (A Guest Of Honour), Bruce Chatwin (On The Black Hill), J.M. Coetzee (Waiting For The Barbarians) and Timothy Mo (Renegade or Halo2) are the other well-known winners of the prestigious award.
“This best of the best award is a wonderful opportunity to revisit some of the best writers in the literary canon. It is fitting in the year of celebration of 250 years of study of English literature at the University of Edinburgh that we recognise the wonderful contribution this prize makes to honouring great literature,” Regius Professor Greg Walker, chair of the James Tait Black Prizes, said.
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