Awards

The naming of the Booker Prize winner tonight in London should spark some activity tomorrow at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This is an unusual year, though, with low sales for all six shortlisted titles. All together, the six books have recorded lifetime sales of 32,342 copies via Nielsen Bookscan. Only Linda Grant’s The Clothes on Their Backs is available in paperback, and that book has sold the most of the six. Bookmakers Ladbrokes has Sebastian Barry’s THE SECRET SCRIPTURE as their 2-to-1 favorite, followed by Steve Toltz’s A FRACTION OF THE WHOLE at 6-to-1, but the bettor’s favorite generally does […]

Paul Krugman has won the Nobel for economics for “his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity.” In the citation, the Academy says: “What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanization? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions. He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography.” Norton published Krugman’s THE CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL in fall 2007.AP

“A surprising number of bettors correctly chose French writer Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio to win the 2008 Nobel Prize for literature — leading the Nobel prize jury to suspect a leak,” the AP reports. Swedish Academy permanent secretary (and anti-American) Horace Engdahl has a “strong suspicion that there has been a leak in the system.” British bookmaker Ladbrooke’s saw the odds on Le Clezio fall from 14-to-1 down to a 1-to-2 favorite right before the announcement. But Engdahl does not fault himself, though he admits reading a book by Le Clezio while flying back to Sweden last week, saying he […]

As promised, the Nobel judges continue to think most highly of European writers, naming Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, 68, the winner of the 2008 prize for literature. Le Clezio is “regarded by some French readers as one of the country’s greatest living writers,” the NYT notes, and his work ranges from novels to children’s books and essays. The Nobel judges called him an ”author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization.” They also like he has ”stood out as an ecologically engaged” writer, an “orientation that is accentuated with […]

Amy Hempel has won the $30,000 Rea Award for the Short Story. The judges said: “Amy Hempel is one of our masters of the dire emotional state rendered with an offhandedness that, combined with tenderness, results in fiction that’s at once dispassionate and compassionate.”