The weekend paper saw the announcement of the Age Book of the Year shortlist.
In the fiction category, Cate Kennedy’s debut novel The World Beneath got the nod as it “cleverly plays with the challenges of being a parent as well as a citizen” while recent visitor Peter Carey’s re-imagining of de Tocqueville Parrot and Olivier in America also caught the judges' eye. The newcomer on the list is GL Osborne (aka Glenys Osborne) for her debut novel Come Inside though she’s no stranger to Age readers as she was runner-up in the Age Short Story Competition in both 2007 and 2008.
In non fiction, Ann Summers' The Lost Mother was shortlisted for as it was a “plangent and powerful book” re-discovering Melbourne artist Constance Stokes. Maria Tumarkind journeys back to the Russia she remembers in Otherland, while Ros Moriaty in Listening to Country looks closer to home examining her marriage to John Moriaty and her acceptance into the Yanyuwa clan in a book which judges felt “laid bare the ugly wreckage of the contemporary Aboriginal reality.”
In poetry Les Murray’s Taller When Prone got a guernsey, as did the prolific Ken Bolton who was shortlisted for A Whistled Bit of Bop though he was also in contention for his verse novel The Circus.
Winners will read from their work at a special event at the Melbourne Writers Festival.