Shortlist Announced for Guardian First Book Award 2009
The shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award 2009, in association with Waterstone’s, has been decided.
The shortlisted books are:
- A Swamp Full of Dollars, by Michael Peel (IB Tauris, non-fiction)
- The Rehearsal, by Eleanor Catton (Granta, novel)
- The Wilderness, by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape, novel)
- The Selected Works of TS Spivet, by Reif Larsen (Harvill Secker, novel)
- An Elegy for Easterly, by Petina Gappah (Faber, short story collection) – hear an interview with Petinah Gappah here on Bookhugger
The shortlist was decided by a celebrity judging panel, along with five Waterstone’s reading groups around the UK who devoured the ten longlisted books in just eight weeks.
Guardian literary editor, Claire Armitstead, who chairs the judging panel, said: “For the first time in the history of the award, four of the shortlisted titles are fiction. I don’t think this is mere coincidence; it reflects the power of good story-telling, and is a reminder that, despite regular cries that the novel is a dying art form, it is still the one we turn to – whether to explore the most troubling areas of society and personal identity, or just to switch off and lose ourselves in something beyond our own small lives.”
Stuart Broom from Waterstone’s said: “We had such a strong non-fiction winner last year it seems almost inevitable that the pendulum would swing back and we’d find fiction dominating the shortlist. As with every year, we have very challenging critics in our groups, and what was particularly interesting this year was that it was the non-fiction that elicited the most controversy and debate about what constitutes a really great writer.”
The overall winner of the Award will be announced on Wednesday 2 December.
