· Record number of entries for 2002 awards, including highest ever in Biography (101)
· All-male Novel/First Novel shortlists including Booker nominee, William Trevor; all female Biography shortlist
· Husband and wife on shortlists for first time - Michael Frayn (Novel) and Claire Tomalin (Biography)
· Children's Book Award winner to be announced with other category winners in early January
Whitbread is delighted to announce today the shortlists for the 2002 Whitbread Book Awards, comprising awards for Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's Book (each worth £5,000).
Established in 1971 by the UK's leading leisure company, the awards aim to celebrate the most enjoyable British writing of the last year. The five category award winners - including the children's winner - will be announced on Wednesday 8th January 2003. The winner of the overall prize, the £25,000 Whitbread Book of the Year, will be selected and announced on Tuesday 28th January 2003, at the Whitbread Book Awards ceremony at The Brewery.
This year the awards attracted a record 447 entries, including the highest ever number of entries in the resurgent Biography category. Judges included authors Joanna Trollope and Michael Dobbs, poet Wendy Cope, GQ Editor/Model Behaviour judge, Dylan Jones and Sunday Times Fiction Editor, Peter Kemp.
The 2002 awards will retain the strapline - enjoy!reading - and the partnerships that were introduced last year - with amazon.co.uk, CILIP (previously the Library Association), the National Reading Campaign and the Booksellers Association - to continue to promote the enjoyment of reading.
In alphabetical order by author the shortlists are:
2002 Whitbread Novel Award shortlist (4 books)
White Lightning Justin Cartwright Sceptre
Spies Michael Frayn Faber & Faber
Rumours of a Hurricane Tim Lott Viking
The Story of Lucy Gault William Trevor Viking
2002 Whitbread First Novel Award shortlist (4 books)
The End of My Tether Neil Astley Flambard
Homage to a Firing Squad Tariq Goddard Sceptre
The Impressionist Hari Kunzru Hamish Hamilton
The Song of Names Norman Lebrecht Review
2002 Whitbread Poetry Award shortlist (4 books)
Something for the Ghosts David Constantine Bloodaxe Books
The Ice Age Paul Farley Picador
Voodoo Shop Ruth Padel Chatto & Windus
The Beautiful Lie Sheenagh Pugh Seren
2002 Whitbread Biography Award shortlist (4 books)
Anthony Blunt: His Lives Miranda Carter Macmillan
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA Brenda Maddox Harper Collins
The Real Mrs Miniver Ysenda Maxtone Graham John Murray
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self Claire Tomalin Viking
2002 Whitbread Children's Book Award shortlist (4 books)
Exodus Julie Bertagna Young Picador
Saffy's Angel Hilary McKay Hodder Children's Books
Sorceress Celia Rees Bloomsbury
Mortal Engines Philip Reeve Scholastic
Full details on each of the shortlists are attached.
Ends
For further information please contact Sunita Rappai at Karen Earl Sponsorship
Telephone: 020 7202 2822 (direct line) or email: [email protected]
Notes for Editors:
Photography of authors and book jackets is available royalty-free from website www.whitbread-bookawards.co.uk. High-resolution photography suitable for media reproduction. Please contact Sunita Rappai for password details on 020 7202 2822.
1. To be eligible for the awards, books must have been published in the UK or Ireland between 1 November 2001 and 31 October 2002. Authors must have been domiciled in the UK or Ireland since November 2000.
2. The total prize fund for the Whitbread Awards now stand at £50,000. The award winners from the five categories - Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children's - each receive £5,000.
3. The overall Whitbread Book of the Year is selected from the five category Award winners with the winner receiving a further £25,000. The winner will be announced at the awards ceremony at The Brewery on January 28, 2002.
4. Whitbread PLC's leading brands hold powerful positions in three of the fastest growing sectors of the £172 billion UK leisure market - hotels, eating out, and health and fitness - and include Marriott Hotels, David Lloyd Leisure and Travel Inn.
Shortlist for the 2002 Whitbread Novel Award (105 entries)
Judges
Michael Dobbs Author
Peter Kemp Fiction Editor, Sunday Times
Vanessa Eversfield Operations Director, Ottakar's
White Lightning by Justin Cartwright (Sceptre £16.99)
Told over the space of a few months, this extraordinary novel tells the story of one man's whole life - his failures, his successes, his longing for peace and fulfilment, his loves and his tragedies. The narrator, a former soft porn film director turned motorcycle courier, has been summoned to South Africa, his birthplace, because his mother is dying. Thus begins an odyssey backwards into his memories…
Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa and educated in America and at Oxford University. His books include Look At It This Way, Interior, Masai Dreaming and Leading The Cheers which won the 1998 Whitbread Novel Award. He lives in north London with his wife and two sons.
The judges: "An enormously enjoyable read, full of energy and life, and a wonderfully miscellaneous novel that rages with wit, acuteness and poignancy, from farm life in South Africa to the film world in London. "
Spies by Michael Frayn (Faber & Faber £14.99)
In the quiet cul-de-sac where Keith and Stephen live, the only immediate signs of the Second World War are the blackout at night and a single random bombsite. But the two boys suspect that the comfortably ordinary houses in the Close and their inhabitants are not what they seem. Then one day, Keith announces an even more disconcerting discovery…
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. His nine previous novels include A Landing on the Sun and Headlong. His thirteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen. He is married to the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin.
The judges: "A beautifully rendered period piece, comic, poignant and nostalgic, which resurrects a particular time and place with great clarity, whilst also raising enduring issues."
Rumours of a Hurricane by Tim Lott (Viking £14.99)
London 1991. A street drunk is rushed into casualty, the apparently wiling victim of a horrific traffic accident. Once this man was somebody, had a wife, a house, a job, and a child. How did he end up here? In Rumours of a Hurricane, Tim Lott takes us back to 1979 to find the answer, to the day Margaret Thatcher came to power, a time before greed became good, before the hurricane…
Tim Lott is a journalist and a writer. His previous books are The Scent of Dried Roses, which was awarded the JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography, and White City Blue which won the 1999 Whitbread First Novel Award. He lives in London.
The judges: "Hugely comic but also hugely compassionate, Rumours of a Hurricane brings to life with great immediacy a period of our lives - the 1980s - which historians are still grappling with. Lott has a superb sense of social life - and a plot that will keep you turning the pages. "
The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor (Viking £16.99)
William Trevor's new novel begins in rural Cork in 1921, in a country still in turmoil. Nine-year-old Lucy Gault cannot bear the thought of leaving Lahardane. Her world is the old house itself, the woods of the glen, the walk along the seashore to school. But chance changes everything, bringing about a calamity so terrible and so vicious that it blights the lives of all the Gaults for many years to come.
William Trevor was born in 1928 in Mitchelstown, County Cork, and spent his childhood in provincial Ireland. His many award-winning books include The Silence in the Garden, Felicia's Journey, which won the 1994 Whitbread Book of the Year, and most recently Death in Summer. In 1977, he was awarded an honorary CBE and in 1999 he received the prestigious David Cohen British Literature Prize. He currently lives in Devon.
The judges: "A veteran novelist writing on top form, Trevor offers a human and elegiac picture of Ireland over the last eighty years. A vivid, gentle and supremely affecting story."
Shortlist for the 2002 Whitbread First Novel Award (76 entries)
Judges
Joanna Trollope Author
Bonnie Greer Playwright, Novelist, Broadcaster
James Daunt Daunt Books
The End of My Tether by Neil Astley (Flambard £10)
Inspector Kernan is investigating the murder of Bernard Tench, a whistle-blowing scientist who knew too much about BSE. As Kernan uncovers links between sleaze and slaughter, between pollution and police, his new sidekick Diana Hunter realises that her eccentric inspector is no ordinary man but a policeman with a mysterious past and special powers…
Neil Astley founded poetry publishers Bloodaxe Books in 1978 and has been its editor for the past 25 years. He has published several anthologies, a book of essays on Tony Harrison, and two poetry collections. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1982 and a D.Litt from Newcastle University in 1996 for his work with Bloodaxe Books.
The judges: "A tour de force, addressing topical and pertinent issues in a wholly original and powerful way. Funny, challenging, provocative, harrowing. Above all else, angry."
Homage to a Firing Squad by Tariq Goddard (Sceptre £12.99)
On a rain-drenched night at the close of the Spanish Civil War, four young men find themselves in a decrepit car on the Tibidado Road, charged with the task of assassinating the politician Don Rojo. All the while, the civil war boils around them, forming a chaotic, blood-spattered backdrop to the increasingly surreal drama that unfolds throughout the night.
Tariq Goddard was born in London in 1975 and studied philosophy at Kings College London and the University of Warwick. He is currently researching a PhD in Continental Philosophy. He will publish his second novel, Dynamo, in May 2003.
The judges: "Funny and inventive, a superbly written and immensely enjoyable read from a supremely confident authorial voice. A book to be read at one sitting."
The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru (Hamish Hamilton £12.99)
At the turn of the century in a remote corner of India, an English civil servant and a reluctant Hindu bride cross paths during a cataclysmic rainstorm. Nine months later a boy is born. But the astrologer's chart does not bode well for the boy's future…
Hari Kunzru was born in 1969 and lives in southeast London. He was an associate editor at Wired and was also named Observer Young Travel Writer of the Year in 1999. He is currently contributing editor on Mute magazine and music editor at Wallpaper.
The judges: "Intensely readable - a poignant account of a search for an identity. Descriptive and atmospheric and occasionally, surprisingly comic, The Impressionist is a delightfully picaresque journey."
The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht (Review £12.99)
Two boys are growing up in wartime London. Martin is an only child, imprisoned in swottish loneliness. Then Dovidl enters his home, a refugee violinist from Warsaw. Blood brothers, they roam the ruined city, finding tragedy and triumph, sex and crime. Until Dovidl disappears, on the afternoon of his international debut…
Norman Lebrecht is one of the most widely read modern commentators on music, culture and politics. His Wednesday column in the Evening Standard has been described as "required reading" and his BBC Radio 3 show, Lebrecht Live, attracts web-listeners from Buenos Aires to Budapest. The Song of Names is his first novel. He is writing two more.
The judges: "A novel of great stature which deals in fascinating themes - with the problem of being burdened by genius and the search for racial identity. An accomplished, hugely moving story."
Shortlist for the 2002 Whitbread Poetry Award (69 entries)
Judges
Wendy Cope Poet
Tom Sutcliffe Critic and Broadcaster
Jonathan Barker Deputy Director, Literature, British Council
Something For The Ghosts by David Constantine (Bloodaxe Books £7.95)
Before ghosts speak, they need a drink of blood, according to Homer. Several of these poems summon up the dead and give them a voice, giving expression to the love and grief that go with them. Constantine's book does not exorcise any ghosts, but rather does the opposite, making them more vigorous and persistent in their haunting.
David Constantine has published six books of poems and four translations with Bloodaxe. He is currently translating Goethe's Faust for Penguin Classics. He is a freelance writer and translator and a Fellow of the Queen's College, Oxford.
The judges: "A book displaying tremendous range with poems about happiness, poems of utter bleakness and personal poems about love and death. A collection that reveals new depths and pleasures with each re-reading."
The Ice Age by Paul Farley (Picador £7.99)
Following his acclaimed debut - The Boy From the Chemist is Here to See You - shortlisted for the 1998 Whitbread Poetry Award, the poems in this collection are as engaged and engaging as ever. Farley uncovers the evidence so often overlooked by less attentive observers, finding the details by which we are proven and elegised.
Paul Farley was born in Liverpool in 1965, and studied at the Chelsea School of Art. In 1998 his first collection won a Forward Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. He has lived in London, Brighton and Cumbria, where he is currently Writer-in-Residence with the Wordsworth Trust.
The judges: "An impressive second collection by an outstandingly talented poet who has the ability to see a large emotional world in the smallest details. The Ice Age is self-aware without being self-conscious."
Voodoo Shop by Ruth Padel (Chatto & Windus £8.99)
Beginning with a love letter and ending with a haunting meditation on departure and migration, Voodoo Shop takes the reader on a series of spectacular journeys across the world. The poems are separate dramatic scenarios with a strikingly varied cast of characters, but taken all together, they enact a single, powerful love story.
Ruth Padel, an award-winning poet, has published four collections of poems and I'm a Man, a witty and original study of rock music, Greek myth and masculinity. For a long time she also wrote the Independent on Sunday's celebrated Sunday Poem column.
The judges: "An exuberant and consistently inventive exploration of sexual passion and belonging. Intensely colourful, fantastically candid, Voodoo Shop also takes the reader on an intensely thrilling ride to exotic places."
The Beautiful Lie by Sheenagh Pugh (Seren £6.95)
In the title poem in this new collection, a four-year-old tells his first lie and the author is struck by this as the start of storytelling. This poem sets the thematic tone for this book where many poems explore the meaning of fiction versus reality.
Sheenagh Pugh has made her home in Wales for a number of years. Best known for her much anthologised Sometimes, she has published two novels and nine collections of poetry, winning the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem and the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year for Stonelight. She lectures at the University of Glamorgan.
The judges: "Deceptively simple, open poems which twist commonplace experiences into a new light. Her poems are moving and funny and thoughtful - they never take refuge in obscurity and replace truisms with a novel kind of truth."
Shortlist for the 2002 Whitbread Biography Award (101 entries)
Judges
Adam Sisman Author
Dylan Jones Editor, GQ
Karen Tyerman Assistant Director (Libraries and Lifelon Learning), Brent Council
Anthony Blunt: His Lives by Miranda Carter (Macmillan £20.00)
A book that attempts to reveal the man behind the myth and rumours: aesthete, communist, homosexual and spy. Blunt's position as a stellar member of the Establishment had once seemed assured - until he was exposed as a spy in 1979 and became a figure of universal opprobrium.
Miranda Carter was educated at St Paul's Girls' School and Exeter College, Oxford. She worked as a publisher and journalist before beginning research on her biography of Anthony Blunt in 1994. She lives in London with her husband and son. This is her first book.
The judges: "An extraordinarily assured debut, meticulously researched, eminently readable, that provides an intriguing portrait of a man who remains, at base, an enigma."
Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox (Harper Collins £20.00)
A powerful story of a remarkably single-minded forthright and tempestuous young woman who, at the age of fifteen, decided that she was going to be a scientist but who was airbrushed out of the greatest scientific discovery of the twentieth century - DNA.
An award-winning biographer whose work has been translated into ten languages, Brenda Maddox has been Home Affairs Editor on the Economist, served as chairman of the Association of British Science Writers and is a member of the Royal Society's Science and Society Committee. She lives in London and mid-Wales.
The judges: "A well-told and dispassionate story, sympathetic to but also critical of its subject and admirably clear in its description of the science."
The Real Mrs Miniver by Ysenda Maxtone Graham (John Murray £17.99)
This story of Jan Struther, author of Mrs Miniver, and the way her life unfolded - from well-brought-up little girl to society wife, to passionate woman in love with a penniless refugee to world-famous author and fervent promoter of Anglo-American relations - is also a microcosm of what the war could do to people.
Ysenda Maxtone Graham is the granddaughter of Jan Struther and brings to this book an understanding available only to one so close. She is herself a professional writer as well, and previously wrote The Church Hesitant. She lives in London.
The judges: "One of the most surprising books of the year about one of the great forgotten love stories. Utterly compelling and a delight from start to finish - a book that forces you to care about its subject."
Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self by Claire Tomalin (Viking £20.00)
Tracing Pepys's youth before the diary began, Tomalin superbly illuminates his ability as an administrator and his greatness as a writer as she follows the extraordinary switchback career of triumphs and disasters that continued for three decades after the diary ended.
Claire Tomalin has worked in publishing and journalism most of her life - she was Literary Editor first of the New Statesman and then the Sunday Times which she left in 1986, as well as author of six highly-acclaimed
The judges: "Funny, irreverent and superbly written, Tomalin's humane portrait of a great man avoids being a synopsis of his diaries but a great introduction to them."
Shortlist for the 2002 Whitbread Children's Book Award (96 entries)
Judges
Geraldine McCaughrean Author
S F Said Author and Commentator
Jane Robertson Buyer, Children's Books, Harrods
Two young judges and CBBC Newsround presenter, Lizo Mzimba, joined the judges on the panel. Saijal Reahal (9) from Notting Hill and Ealing High School, London and Tim Wickson (14) from Bungay High School, Suffolk, were winners of the Whitbread Book Awards/CBBC Newsround Presspackers competition.
Exodus by Julie Bertagna (Young Picador £9.99)
Mara's island home is drowning, slowly but surely, beneath storm-tossed waves. As the mighty icecaps melt, the Earth is giving up its land to the ocean - and a community, a way of life, are going to die. In a terrifying gamble for survival, Mara and the islanders of Wing take to their boats in the ultimate exodus…
Julie Bertagna was born in Ayrshire and grew up near Glasgow. After an English degree at Glasgow University she worked as an editor, a teacher and a freelance journalist. She still lives in Glasgow with her family, writing in a tiny hundred-year-old wine cellar under the stairs.
The judges: "This ultra-vivid fantasy is set in a world drowned by global warming, but it never feels like a preachy "message" book. An exhilarating rush of invention and storytelling with some of the most startling imagery in contemporary fiction."
Saffy's Angel by Hilary McKay (Hodder Children's Books £10.00)
When Saffron finds that her name is not on the colour chart, she discovers that she has been adopted - the start of her hilarious search for a stone angel she remembers from her dreams. Meanwhile Saffy's family are busy with their own wacky projects. No wonder Saffy feels she can't rely on their help in her quest - but maybe she's in for a surprise…
Award-winning writer Hilary McKay was born and grew up in Boston, Lincolnshire, and after reading Botany and Zoology at St Andrew's University, she switched to English which inspired her to start writing. A former scientist, she now writes full-time. She lives with her husband and two young children in north Derbyshire.
The judges: "A beautifully crafted, warm, generous and original book full of real emotional insights that confers on the reader honorary membership of a fantastic new family - and will also make you laugh out loud. An immensely enjoyable read."
Sorceress by Celia Rees (Bloomsbury £10.99)
Mary and Agnes' lives are separated by almost 400 years, but still more than blood inextricably links them. Like Mary, Agnes has special powers and it is those special powers that Mary will rely on to tell her story. Agnes' ability to have visions ensures that Mary will not leave her until her story is told.
Sorceress is Celia Rees' sequel to the highly-acclaimed best seller, Witch Child. Celia was born and went to school in Solihull and taught English in comprehensive schools in Coventry for 17 years. She now lives in Leamington Spa with her husband and teenage daughter where she writes full-time.
The judges: "A moving and beautifully told story that immerses the reader in both past and present, as a girl discovers her link to an event from centuries before. Compelling, engrossing and an utter joy to read."
Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve (Scholastic £5.99)
Entire cities are on the move, consuming and attacking each other. Overhead, towns escape the madness of the Hunting Ground by setting up complete communities in the sky. Two teenagers are on the run, hotly pursued by London's most respected archaeologist and an indestructible robot, both determined to kill them.
Philip Reeve was born and raised in Brighton, where he worked in a bookshop for years while also producing and directing a number of no-budget theatre projects. He has been writing stories since he was five but this is the first to be published. He lives on Dartmoor with his wife and son, and his interests are walking, drawing, writing and reading.
The judges: " Exciting and entertaining with vivid characterisation and a fast moving plot, Philip Reeve has made a startling debut. Mortal Engines is a supremely imaginative, rollicking adventure story."
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