The Folio prize, a new award for the best book published in Britain in the past year, could wind up in the hands of an American. The shortlist, announced Monday morning, is dominated by American writers, as the prize is opened to all books written in the English language.
There are eight finalists, five of whom are American, notes The BBC. The remaining three are English, Canadian and Irish.
Here are the eight books that will compete:
Red Doc by Anne Carson (Canada)
Schroder by Amity Gaige (U.S.)
Last Friends by Jane Gardam (U.K.)
Benediction by Kent Haruf (U.S.)
The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (U.S.)
A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Ireland)
A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava (U.S.)
Tenth of December by George Saunders (U.S.)
British poet Lavinia Greenlaw is the chair of the judging panel, reports The Associated Press. She said that the American majority was just a coincidence and that they focused just on the material, not the nationality of the author.
The prize was founded by Andrew Kidd, who hopes that it will be a major rival to the Booker Prize, which had previously been criticized for only including writers in the British Commonwealth. But that will change with next year’s Booker, as Americans and other English-speaking writers will be eligible for the first time.
De La Pava’s work is one of the most interesting on the list. The New York public defender’s book was first published in 2008 by the author, but the University of Chicago Press picked it up and published it. The 800-page book recounts the War on Drugs in New York City.
image: Amazon