IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, Women's Prize for Fiction & Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize Winners

There has been quite a few prize winners announced in the last two days, time to keep you all up to date.

The IMPAC Dublin Literary Award was taken out by Kevin Barry for his novel "City of Bohane". The 100,00 euro prize is the largest for a single novel published in English, and nominations are made by public libraries throughout the globe.  Irish-born Kevin Barry hails from Limerick and lives in Slingo, on Ireland's west coast. He is the author of two award winning short story collections. City of Bohane is his first novel.

More details of his win can be seen at http://www.impacdublinaward.ie/news/kevin-barry-wins-the-2013-award-for-city-of-bohane/

The Women's Prize for fiction has been taken out by AM Homes for her novel "May We Be Forgiven". The award (formally known as the Orange Prize) was tipped to go to Hilary Mantel for "Bringing Up The Bodies", but AM Homes took home the 30,000 pounds for her "dazzling, original, viscerally funny black comedy; a subversion of the American dream" as described by Miranda Richardson the chair of the judging panel.

News report from "The Independent" at http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/womens-prize-for-fiction-2013-hilary-mantel-denied-literary-hattrick-as-american-author-am-homes-takes-the-crown-8646204.html






On the translation front the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize acknowledges the amazing work performed by the translators. It is for book-length literary translations into English from any living European language. It aims to honour the craft of translation, and to recognise its cultural importance.

I understand the winner was Philip Boehm for the translation of "The Hunger Angel" by Herta Muller, the shortlist (chosen from 135 submitted novels) can be viewed at http://www.st-annes.ox.ac.uk/about/oxford-weidenfeld-translation-prize.html

My review of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award shortlisted "Pure" by Andrew Miller is forthcoming and I'll jump straight into "City Of Bohane" and of course post a review.

Congratulations to all the winners, working in the literary industry and winning one of the most major prizes and being the recipient of only 100,000 euros or 30,000 pounds (or in the case of translators a nice night out) just goes to show how low on the economic scale we rate our artists.