Australian authors David Malouf and Craig Silvey have made it onto the shortlist of one of the most prestigious - and idiosyncratic - of literary awards.The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award has announced its shortlist of ten novels, culled from a typically massive longlist of more than 150 titles submitted by libraries around the world. For the record, the State Library of Victoria nominated Ilsa Evans' The Family Tree, Alex Miller’s Lovesong and Kalinda Ashton’s The Danger Game. Lovesong won the most nods from Australia’s nominating libraries. At the other end of the spectrum, the National Library of the Maldives and the Municipal Library of Thessaloniki, Greece, both nominated Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.
The award carries the largest purse of any literary award in the world for a single work of fiction - €100,000 ($140,000). A joint venture of the City of Dublin and a productivity improvement company, the award is adminsitered by Dublin’s municipal library. It is awarded to any novel written or translated into English, post-dated two years. The long lead time and the long longlist (announced in October last year) are idiosyncratic in the world of literary awards, but these idiosyncrasies make for an award that consistently throws up surprises without compromising credibility.
Fremantle-based author and musician Craig Silvey has been nominated for Jasper Jones, while Queenslander David Malouf is nominated for Ransom. Malouf won the inaugural award in 1996 for Remembering Babylon.