As someone who was, until the past few years, more in touch with the literary scene of the 1800s than that of her own century, I always largely ignored the literary prizes. Why worry about José Saramago or Philip Roth when there were Austens and Dickenses to be read? Nowadays though, I get excited when the autumn prize season comes around. Of course, there are a few major prizes awarded earlier in the year–notably the Pulitzer (April) and the IMPAC Dublin (June)–but the real glut occurs in October and November.

The Nobel Prize in Literature

Last week, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk was named the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. When his name was tossed around last year as a possible winner of this prize, I sought out a copy of his IMPAC Dublin award winner, My Name is Red. It was a wonderful book–creative, inventive, haunting, and intriguing. His latest novel, Snow, is on my To Be Read pile.

With the controversy of last year’s aborted criminal charges relating to his speaking about the Armenian genocide still hanging in the air, there’s been much discussion about the politics that went into this choice by the Nobel Foundation.

As blogger edwardhenry notes:

“Turkey is an emerging country, and its conflicted national identity is central to Snow and, as is made clear in all of these news articles, to Pamuk’s larger literature. This tension is a terrific breeding ground for great literature, and Pamuk has written about emerging Turkishness with astounding success. So the fact that there is an opposing, traditional nationalist voice (see the quote from one Kemal Kerincsiz in the article, in which he speculates that Pamuk was given the prize because he “belittled our national values”) in this narrative just adds an extra layer to Pamuk’s work. The tension, which is present in the literature, is then escalated by its appearance in the literature and the responses to its portrayal. It’s a lovely spiral.”

Charles McGrath of the New York Times has written in defense of Mr Pamuk’s literary merit, and even Margaret Atwood, another contender for this year’s Prize, has weighed in on this one.

The Man Booker Prize

Beating the odds, Kiran Desai’s novel The Inheritance of Loss was picked by the Man Booker judges as the best British/Commonwealth/Irish novel of 2006. Hermione Lee, the chair of the Booker Prize judges described in a fascinating essay in the Guardian how difficult it is to tune out the white noise (like critics’ opinions, commercial interests, and readers’ expectations) and focus on what really matters: “the future of reading, the power of story-telling, the adventure of language”.
I have yet to read this surprise winner (have any of you? I’m interested to know what you think), but I’m looking forward to it. If Desai is a stranger to you, check out some of her interviews.

The Giller Prize (shortlist)

The Booker judges weren’t the only ones who let loose with a surprise this year. The Canadian literary scene is all abuzz with talk of the Giller 2006 shortlist which overlooked some big CanLit names like Douglas Coupland and Wayne Johnston in favor of some relative unknowns:

• De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage
• Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam
• The Perfect Circle by Pascale Quiviger
• The Immaculate Conception by Gaétan Soucy
• Home Schooling by Carol Windley

The National Book Awards (shortlist)

We were also treated to some unexpected entries on the National Book Awards shortlist. Books about 9/11 feature large, and unconventional narratives (including a graphic novel) are included among the contenders:

Fiction

• Only Revolutions by Mark Z. Danielewski
• A Disorder Peculiar to the Country by Ken Kalfus
• The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
• Eat the Document by Dana Spiotta
• The Zero by Jess Walter

Non-fiction

• At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 by Taylor Branch
• Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
• The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan
• Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China’s Past and Present by Peter Hessler
• The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright

Poetry

• Averno by Louise Gluck
• Chromatic by H.L. Hix
• Angle of Yaw by Ben Lerner
• Splay Anthem by Nathaniel Mackey
• Capacity by James McMichael

Young People’s Literature

• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson
• Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt
• Sold by Patricia McCormick
• The Rules of Survival by Nancy Werlin
• American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

Book blogger GalleyCat does a good job of noting the rationale and reactions to this year’s nominees.

Update (October 17th):

Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award nominees were announced today, and again the big literary celebrities were passed over (though it should be noted that icons Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood asked to be left out of consideration).

English Fiction

• The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens
• The Fearsome Particles by Trevor Cole
• Gargoyles by Bill Gaston
• De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage
• The Dodecahedron or A Frame for Frames by Paul Glennon

Those are just the English Fiction shortlisted books. For the rest of the contenders, check out Passing the Word Around Canada.