Pick, Edugyan, deWitt make Booker longlist

Three Canadian authors have made the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction longlist, announced today. Alison Pick’s Far to Go (House of Anansi Press, Q&Q’s September 2010 cover profile), Esi Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues (forthcoming from Thomas Allen & Son in September and profiled in the July-August 2011 issue of Q&Q), and Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers (House of Anansi) are vying for the title of “the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland.”

It’s also worth noting three of the longlisted titles come from House of Anansi, which is also the domestic publisher of Stephen Kelman’s longlisted book, Pigeon English.

The full list includes:

• Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (Jonathan Cape/Random House)
• Sebastian Barry, On Canaan’s Side (Faber)
• Carol Birch, Jamrach’s Menagerie (Canongate Books/HarperCollins)
• Patrick deWitt, The Sisters Brothers (Granta/House of Anansi)
• Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues (Serpent’s Tail/Thomas Allen)
• Yvvette Edwards, A Cupboard Full of Coats (Oneworld)
• Alan Hollinghurst, The Stranger’s Child (Picador/Pan Macmillan)
• Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English (Bloomsbury/House of Anansi)
• Patrick McGuinness, The Last Hundred Days (Seren Books)
• A.D. Miller, Snowdrops (Atlantic)
• Alison Pick, Far to Go (Headline Review/House of Anansi)
• Jane Rogers, The Testament of Jessie Lamb (Sandstone Press)
• D.J. Taylor, Derby Day (Chatto & Windus/Random House)

The six-title shortlist will be revealed Sept. 6 and the winner announced Oct. 18. Each author included on the shortlist will receive £2,500 and a special edition of their book. The winner will be awarded an additional £50,000. The jury, chaired by Dame Stella Rimington, is made up of writer Matthew d’Ancona, author Susan Hill, author and politician Chris Mullin, and Gaby Wood, books editor at The Daily Telegraph.

Barack’s brother speaks out

Barack Obama’s half-brother, Mark Ndesandjo, has broken his media silence to promote a semi-autobiographical novel about the U.S. president’s abusive father. Ndesandjo told the Associated Press in a recent interview that the novel, titled Nairobi to Shenzhen, is his attempt to come to terms with the domestic abuse he suffered while growing up. The Guardian reports:

[Ndesandjo's] self-published novel – like the president’s memoir Dreams from My Father – focuses on Barack Obama senior.

“My father beat my mother and my father beat me, and you don’t do that,” Ndesandjo told Associated Press (AP), saying he wrote Nairobi to Shenzhen in part to raise awareness of domestic violence.

“It’s something which I think affected me for a long time, and it’s something that I’ve just recently come to terms with.”

In other Barack book news, the Scotsman (via The Bookseller) is reporting that sales of Obama’s two memoirs, Dreams from My Father and The Audacity of Hope, have led their U.K. publisher, Canongate Books, to a record turnover of £7.35 million in just six months. The windfall has  propelled the success of Canongate’s publisher, Jamie Byng, whom the Edinburgh-based newspaper describes as the “enfant terrible of British publishing.”

The 40-year-old discovered the works of the then aspiring Democrat politician three years ago, before he rose to worldwide fame. Snapping up the U.K. and Commonwealth publishing rights may yet be the best decision he ever made.

Sales are eventually expected to pass two million – boosted by an innovative new e-book edition for iPods – and have put him on course to beat last year’s profits of £2.6 million.

Although coming from a wealthy family – who helped him buy his company, Canongate Books, when he was 25 – he is now on course to become a wealthy man in his own right.

Bookmarks: Orwell blogs, Chabon wins big, China’s publishing industry goes quiet

Some book-related links:

• Orwell, the blogger (Time)
• Hugo Awards awarded – Chabon wins the big one (The Hugo Awards)
• China’s publishing industry shuts down during Olympics (The New York Times)
• A pair of Canadians (including Q&Q contributor Ian Daffern) have online comic in contention in DC Comics contest (Shock Effect blog)
• Jerusalem’s Russian Library (Jerusalem Post)
• Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish dies (Reuters)
• Canongate publisher Jamie Byng blasts Bookers for not picking Canongate book (The Age)
• Muslim scholar’s novel angers Egyptian Christians (GulfNews.com)
• A guide to all those semi-fictional addiction memoirs (CBC.ca)
• Library overdue fees go to help flood victims (IndyStar.com)