MOLESKINE ® LITERARIO

El prestigioso premio IMPAC nuevamente da un golpe y patea el tablero. El ganador de este premio, que tiene más de cien candidatos elegidos por librerías del mundo y luego una shortlist escogida por un jurado, fue un debutante: Michael Thomas con Man Gone Down. 100,000 euros van para él. Dice la nota en The Guardian:

A debut novelist who says he's never really had a proper job has won the world's richest literary award. American writer Michael Thomas beat authors including Philip Roth, Doris Lessing and Joyce Carol Oates to take the €100,000 (£85,000) Impac Dublin prize with his debut novel, Man Gone Down. "I'm stunned," Thomas said today, in Dublin for the prize ceremony from his home town of New York. "I had a hard time believing I'd made the shortlist – or the longlist, for that matter – so I'm still waiting for the punch line." Currently a professor at Hunter College in New York, he said he'd use his winnings to "pay some bills". "It's too late to bet on myself [winning]," he said. "I've had an interesting life up until now, so I may get a little more conservative. I've got three kids, a mortgage, a half-built house ..." Man Gone Down is a stream-of-consciousness narrative by a black man from Boston, married to a white woman with whom he has three children. The story stretches over a four-day period, with the unnamed narrator on the eve of his 35th birthday, broke and estranged from his family, with just four days to find the money to keep his family afloat. Described by the judging panel as an "extraordinary novel ... from a writer of enthralling voice and startling insight", Thomas said he'd written it at a time when he was "feeling a little desperate" himself. It beat seven other shortlisted novels – including Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Junot Díaz's Pulitzer-winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Indra Sinha's Booker-shortlisted Animal's People - and an international longlist of 147 titles, nominated by libraries around the world, to take the prize. "We never know his name. But the African-American protagonist of Michael Thomas's masterful debut, Man Gone Down, will stay with readers for a long time," said the panel of judges, which included the novelists Rachel Billington and Timothy Taylor. "Tuned urgently to the way we live now, [Man Gone Down] is a novel brilliant in its scope and energy, and deeply moving in its human warmth."

La shortlist completa incluyó, además del ganador, a: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz; The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles by Roy Jacobsen, in translation; Ravel by Jean Echenoz, in translation; Animal’s People by Indra Sinha; The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid; The Archivist’s Story by Travis Holland and The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt.

Etiquetas: eeuu, hamid, impac, junot díaz, michael thomas, PREMIO, sinha

Opacada por la emergente, arrasadora literatura de la India, la literatura paquistaní escrita en inglés siempre ha sido considerada la hermana menos talentosa, la Heinrich Mann de esa familia, digamos. Sin embargo, el éxito de The Reluctant Fundamentalist de Mohsin Hamid (que estuvo en la shortlist del Booker hace dos años), una novela que busqué infrutuosamente en España por cierto, ha hecho voltear un poco el reflector hacia la hermana menos afortunada. Claro, justo le tocó un momento en el que la literatura India está boyante, pero los paquistanís defienden su propio mini-boom en The Guardian:

"Some of us have been writing for many years but suddenly we've had four or five novels coming out together and that's created a buzz," said Shamsie, whose latest work is an ambitious story that starts off in Second World War Japan and moves to post-9/11 Afghanistan. "Indian writing has been established for 25 years or more, since Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie's book, published in 1981). Pakistani writing is very much in its infancy. "Pakistani writing is like the new young fast bowler on the scene but Indian writing is like the spinner who's been going for years and whose greatness is assumed."

Desde luego, la política ocupa el tema central de esta literatura escrita, hasta el punto de que es casi inconcebible una novela sin este tema (Mohsin Hamid lo justifica así: "Great fiction comes from the tension that produces those dramatic political developments"). Además, las obras más exitosas han sido realizadas por jóvenes privilegiados, una pequeña élite que ha logrado educarse fuera del país:

Readers have embraced the political nature of much of the new Pakistani fiction, looking perhaps for an explanation of the country's turmoil, which has accelerated after it sided with the West in the "war on terror". "If you've grown up in Pakistan, to sit down and write something that's not political is almost impossible," said Hanif, a former air force pilot. "I'm sure that the headlines make people curious about Pakistan but when they read these stories, I hope it's done on their own merit." The Pakistani writers causing most excitement tend to be young and from the country's upper class, having grown up in Pakistan in the 1980s. Mohsin Hamid said that, for Pakistan's small English-speaking elite who had been able to live an insulated lifestyle up to the 1980s, coming of age under the oppressive dictatorship of General Zia was a "dramatic wrenching change" that created a fertile ground for writers. "There's a desire now to dine on Pakistani writing cuisine. It's coming at the same time as some really amazing Pakistani writing," said Hamid, who lives in London. "Great fiction comes from the tension that produces those dramatic political developments. Pakistan has been going through really interesting times. As writers process that through their fiction, they're coming up with an art with a real urgency and personal need."

En The Guardian aparece, además, una lista de libros al respecto para no perderse:

Kamila Shamsie's epic novel Burnt Shadows tells the story of three families, spanning decades and continents. Stretching from the detonation of the nuclear bomb in Nagasaki in 1945 to Afghanistan in the wake of 9/11 via India and Pakistan, it's a sweeping narrative with a breath-taking climax. Shamsie was born in Pakistan and lives in London.

Mohammed Hanif's darkly comic first novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes - shortlisted for the Guardian's first book award last year - takes as its starting point the plane crash in which Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq died on 17 August 1988, offering increasingly bizarre explanations for the event, from mechanical failure to a blind woman's curse.

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders is a collection of linked short stories about an extended Pakistani landowning family in Lahore. Daniyal Mueenuddin, who practised law in New York before returning to Pakistan to manage the family farm, has created a revealing glimpse into the complexities of Pakistani class and culture.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid sees Pakistani Princeton graduate Changez buttonhole an American stranger in a Lahore cafe to tell how his high-flying career and budding relationship in Manhattan started to crumble following the attacks on 9/11. The narrative shows how Changez really feels about the attacks. Hamid grew up in Lahore, attended Princeton like his protagonist, and lives in London.

Etiquetas: hamid, hanif, india, inglaterra, NOTICIA, paquistan, rushdie, salman rushdie

Y ya que mencionamos a Juan Palomo y a su papelera, en la que acaba de aparecer hoy en "El Cultural" nos cuenta sobre una nueva novela sobre el 11-S, esta vez publicada por Tusquets, y cuyo autor es el joven narrador paquistaní Mohsin Hamid.

Dice lJuan Palomo: " Si creía que del 11-S lo sabía todo, aunque sólo sea por esas imágenes que forman ya parte de la historia personal de cada uno, o por los cientos de ensayos y novelas de los grandes autores contemporáneos (de Don DeLillo a McEwan) que han desmenuzado las causas y consecuencias de la masacre, está equivocado. Faltaba ver el otro lado del espejo, la historia de los musulmanes estadounidenses que en 2001 vivían en Nueva York, y que a partir del 12-S dejaron de ser amigos y vecinos para convertirse simplemente en sospechosos y enemigos. Esa otra historia es la que narra el joven paquistaní Mohsin Hamid (1971) en su novela El fundamentalista reticente, que publicará en España Tusquets la próxima primavera, y que ha sido seleccionada por el New York Times y por Publishers Weekley como uno de los libros de 2007, quizá porque el propio autor, que estudió en Princeton y en la Harvard School y ha sido asesor financiero en NY, sabe demasiado bien de lo que habla. "

Etiquetas: el fundamentalista reticente, hamid, juan palomo, NOTICIA, paquistan, tusquets

Ya apareció la shortlist del Booker y, desde luego, el multi favorito Ian McEwan y On Chesil Beach sigue ahí. Eso no es sorprendente. Lo que sí ha sorprendido a muchos es que, fuera de McEwan, quien ya superó las 100,000 copias de su libro, las ventas de los demás de la lista son paupérrimas, al nivel de best seller peruano digamos. ¿Crisis del mundo editorial? ¿Ya nadie compra ficciones en el mundo? ¿Ha dejado de tener interés para los lectores el Booker? Las cifras son elocuentes. La nota es de Nigel Reynolds en Telegraph.co.uk

Dice Reynolds: "While McEwan's novella, On Chesil Beach, has been a runaway commercial success, selling more than 100,000 copies, one of his rivals for the prize, Animal's People, loosely based on the Bhopal chemical plant explosion, by the Indian author Indra Sinha, had sold just 231 copies in this country by mid-August, 10 days after its sales were supposedly given a major boost by being longlisted. Nicola Barker's Darkmans had sold only 499 copies. Anne Enright's The Gathering had fared a little better with sales of 834 sales, Mister Pip had sales of 880 and of McEwan's rivals, only Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist broke the four-figure barrier, with 1,519 readers buying it (...) The Man Booker organisers denied that readers' apparent indifference demonstrated dwindling interest in the prize, first launched in 1969. Ion Trewin, the administrator, defended the selection of barely known authors and forecast that sales would pick quickly once the shortlist was known. He said: "One of the joys of this prize is identifying talent for the future. "It is a strong list and if we had six well-known names every year we would be criticised for not encouraging new talent. And just because you are a well-known name, it does not mean that you produce your best work every year." Four winners in the past 10 years - Yann Martel, DBC Pierre, Kiran Desai and Arundhati Roy - were unkown before their victories, he said.

La shortlist incluye a las siguientes novelas:

Darkmans, by Nicola Barker

On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan

Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones

Animal's People, by Indra Sinha

The Reluctant Fundamentalist, by Mohsin Hamid

The Gathering, by Anne Enright Liam.

Etiquetas: barker, booker, hamid, ian mc ewan, jones, liam, PREMIO, sinha