Now awarded to the best work of literature in English, regardless of form, this marks the first year that the £20,000 literary prize has been open to nonfiction. Of the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, Soueif said: “In a way, the distinction between the two, especially the kind of nonfiction that is being written today, is one that one doesn’t need to be bound by.”
Matar’s memoir emerged as winner from an eight-strong shortlist, evenly split between fiction and nonfiction, including novels such as China Miéville’s The Census Taker and Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill, and nonfiction including Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami’s account of the Syrian conflict, Burning Country. His second, Anatomy of a Disappearance, was published to great acclaim in 2011. His debut novel, In the Country of Men, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and the Guardian first book award in 2006.
“It could have been a novel if we had not known that it was a real story,” she said, adding: “The novelist’s attention to structure and style that had gone into fashioning it delivered a very powerful effect.”īest known as a novelist, Matar was born in New York, grew up in Tripoli and Cairo, and now lives in England. Author Ahdaf Soueif, chair of judges, said that the book had hit a nerve with the judges, and crossed the boundary between fiction and nonfiction.
0 kommentar(er)
