Friday, April 13, 2007

Man Booker Prize Finalists


The biennial (and only the second) Man Booker International
Prize will be granted to one of the following 15 authors. The 15 contenders are:

Chinua Achebe
Margaret Atwood
John Banville
Peter Carey
Don DeLillo
Carlos Fuentes
Doris Lessing
Ian McEwan
Harry Mulisch
Alice Munro
Michael Ondaatje
Amos Oz
Philip Roth
Salman Rushdie
Michel Tournier


For more information, check out the Man Booker website:


I vote for Canadian author Michael Ondaatje. Everything he writes: poetry, novels, essays, is incandescent and beautiful. "Anil's Ghost" is my favorite work of his, a haunting and tragic novel about war in the author's native Sri Lanka. Powell's Bookstore has a great interview with Ondaatje about this book which is fascinating.

His most widely known work, "The English Patient", is the Booker Prize-winning epic of memorable characters wounded by the onslaught of World War II. "Running in the Family" is an interesting autobiographical look at Ondaatje's parents and his childhood in Sri Lanka. I've got "Coming Through Slaughter" on my bookshelf of things to read and am really looking forward to this novel based on the life of jazz cornet legend Buddy Bolden.

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