May 26, 2002

It’s official now. One hundred of the world’s best authors have put their heads together and voted Don Quixote, as the best book of all time. The poll was organized by editors of the Norwegian Book Clubs in Oslo to find the “most meaningful book of all time” and authors from 54 countries around the world voted. The voter’s list included celebrated authors such as Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, Seamus Heaney, and Carlos Fuentes. The Swedish children’s author of Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren also managed to vote just before her death in January. Her own novel is also on the list.

Fyodor Dostoevsky had four of his works listed: Crime and punishment, The idiot, The possessed and The brothers Karamazov and three of Shakespeare’s plays, Hamlet, King Lear and Othello also appeared. Tolstoy’s War and peace, Anna Karenina and The death of Ivan Ilyich and other stories made it to the list as well.

Nigerian author Ben Okri, who announced the result of the poll at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, said about the winning work: “If there is one novel you should read before you die, it is Don Quixote. Don Quixote has the most wonderful and elaborated story, yet it is simple.”

The classic tale is about a Spanish knight driven mad by reading too many romances. Surprisingly, very few living authors are on the list. Those who feature include Doris Lessing, Toni Morrison and Gabriel Garcia Marquez — who had declined to vote.

 

Impac awards
French novelist Michel Houellebecq, 44, has won the £60,000 international Impac award for his novel Atomised. The novel beat Booker prizewinners Margaret Atwood (The blind assassin) and Peter Carey (The true history of the Kelly Gang) to win first prize. The initial list of books nominated for the Impac award is chosen by 123 libraries in 38 countries and that is why the award is known as the ‘best of the best’. A team of judges then considers the list.

This year judges hailed Atomised, as being “a bleak yet often humorous portrayal of modern life, filled with energy, mordant humour and wondrously passionate excess”.

 

Miller wins
US playwright Arthur Miller has won Spain’s prestigious Principe de Asturias Prize for Literature. The jury described Miller, 86, as “the undisputed master of modern drama”. The prize is awarded by Spain’s Crown Prince Felipe de Bourbon to recognize outstanding achievement in eight different fields including, science, and sports. Previous winners of the literary award include Doris Lessing and Carlos Fuentes.

In the past Miller has won the Pulitzer Prize for his play Death of a salesman. His other works, famous for dealing with moral dilemmas, include All my sons and A view from the bridge. His play The crucible is an allegory that drew parallels between the seventeenth century Salem witch trials, and McCarthyism, the witch hunt for Communist sympathizers in the US during the 1950s. The octogenarian playwright will receive a prize of $45,500 and a statuette.

 

Surfing Hemingway
Hemingway who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 will become the first major author to have all his literary work put on the net. From August, Internet surfers will be able to download and read all of the writer’s 23 novel, including such classics as For whom the bells toll and A farewell to arms for a relatively cheap $9.99. Other authors whose books are available on the worldwide web include Jane Austen, George Eliot and Charles Dickens. However these ventures have not been very successful, as readers are still not able to read with ease from the monitor screen.

In the past authors, like the king of horror Stephen King, have also written for the Internet. King had started writing a novel on the Internet, before giving up saying that surfers have low attention spans.

Let’s see how Hemingway does.

 

Shakespeare in queer love?
A 400-year-old painting has sparked a literary controversy. The painting which was believed to be that of a woman has been found to be that of an effeminate male patron and friend of William Shakespeare, its owner said.

The portrait of the Earl of Southampton, who had long, black curly hair, ruby red lips, an earring and slim hands, has prompted speculation in the British media that Shakespeare was gay.

Alec Cobbe, the painting’s owner, said that while the Earl was dressed fashionably for his days, his earring and hair were unusual for that era. He added that for all these years his family had assumed that the portrait was that of Lady Norton. Cobbe later discovered that his family had links with the Southamptons and that there was a striking resemblance between this portrait and other representations of the 3rd Earl of Southampton. That convinced him that this was indeed Shakespeare’s friend and frequent host.

Some scholars have long believed that Southampton was the young man to whom an early sequence of Shakespeare’s sonnets was addressed. In one of his sonnets Shakespeare refers to the ‘master-mistress of my passion’.

Quick to pick up the story the British media is having a field day with the discovery. Sun, one of the country’s most popular tabloids titled its story Shakesqueer.

 

Harry Potter disappoints
Fans were disappointed when a spokeswoman for J.K. Rowling announced that the fifth book in the Harry Potter series would not be available in the stores as was expected this summer. The author who is working on her fifth novel is not likely to finish writing before the year’s end.

Harry Potter and the order of the phoenix, the fifth instillment in the series, is now expected to come out in 2003. The spokeswoman denied stories that Rowling, the world’s richest author, was suffering from writer’s block adding that there had never been a specific deadline for the novel in the first place.

Bookshops around Britain have been inundated with calls from fans eager to find out when the next instalment hits the bookshelves. Expectations were particularly high because in the past Rowling has dished out her wildly popular book at the rate of one a year.

Last year there was no book, but fans got the film version of the first book Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone to make up for it. Rowling plans to write a total of seven Harry Potter books before putting down the pen.

 

Man Booker
This year’s winner of Britain’s leading book award, the Booker Prize, will go laughing to the bank, as the value of the award has more than doubled in value.

The winner will now take home £50,000, as opposed to the £20,000 in prize money that Peter Carey took home last year for his novel True history of the Kelly Gang.

The six shortlisted writers will get £2,500, compared to last year’s £1,000. This dramatic hike which has propelled the award £20,000 ahead of its nearest rival, the Whitbread book award, is the result of the Booker linking up with a new sponsor. Man Group, the current sponsor took over from the food chain Iceland, when it promised to donate £2.5m over five years. In return The Booker will be re-christened, a chauvinistic Man Booker. Thus the link of the prize to the Booker Group will be in name only. The group was founded in 1969.

 

Woman Booker
For once the women are leading. Man Booker is taking a leaf out of the feminist Orange Prizes book, by allowing US contenders to be eligible to win in two years time. Currently the Orange Prize, which is a British literary award exclusively for women, has one American author for every four British authors. On an aside, ever since the Booker was renamed the Man Booker, The Orange Prize is being dubbed the Woman Booker!

 

Not so literary jailbird
Poor Jeffrey Archer, nothing really seems to be going right for the disgraced author. The novelist was jailed last year for perjury in a scandalous case, which lifted the curtains on Archer’s alleged one night stand with a prostitute. Reports about the best-selling author revealed that the jailbird was continuing with his literary activities despite the environs and was due out with his next thriller in autumn this year. Current reports however revealed that the book’s release has now been pushed back to next summer. One wonders what else is keeping him busy in prison?

 

Audio mysteries
Those who grew up reading Carolyn Keene’s Nancy Drew mysteries and Franklin W. Dixon’s Hardy Boys are in for a pleasant surprise. The books are being released as an unabridged audio version to be read by Oscar-nominated actress Laura Linney and actor Bill Irwin. The audio book will be in two cassettes, and will run for three and a half-hours. Linner will read Nancy Drew’s The secret of the old clock whereas Irwin will read The Hardy Boys’ the tower treasure.

Many fans will be surprised to discover that Nancy Drew’s author Carolyn Keene is actually the pseudonym used by Mildred Augustine Wirt Benson, who is now a 96-year-old columnist and wrote the original 23 mysteries in the series. New Nancy Drew mysteries continue to be published every season. On the other hand Franklin W. Dixon is the fictitious author of the Hardy Boys series which were actually written by a team of journalists.

Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)