Cusk, Robinson make longlist for lucrative Scotiabank Giller Prize
Rachel Cusk’s novel “Transit” and Eden Robinson’s “Son of a Trickster” are among the contenders for this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Madeleine Thien, last year’s winner, announced the long list at a ceremony in St. John’s, N.L.
The prize awards $100,000 to the winner and $10,000 to the other finalists.
“Transit” (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd) and “Son of a Trickster” (Alfred A. Knopf Canada) were among 12 titles chosen from a field of 112 books.
The five-member jury described a collection that “gave the impression of a world in transition: searching inward as much as outward, wary but engaged.”
A short list will be announced Oct. 2 and the winner will be announced at a televised gala in Toronto on Nov. 20.
The jury panel this year included Canadian writers Anita Rau Badami, Andre Alexis and Lynn Coady, along with British writer Richard Beard and U.S. writer Nathan Englander.
“As with any year, there were trends, themes that ran through any number of books: the plight of the marginalized, the ongoing influence of history on the present, the way it feels to grow up in our country, the way the world looks to the psychologically damaged,” the jury said in a release.
“But 2017 was also a year of outliers, of books that were eccentric, challenging or thrillingly strange, books that took us to amusing or disturbing places.” Also making the longlist: David Chariandy for “Brother” (McClelland & Stewart),
David Demchuk for “The Bone Mother,” (ChiZine Publications),
Joel Thomas Hynes for “We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night” (HarperPerennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd),
Andree A. Michaud for “Boundary,” translated by Donald Winkler (Biblioasis International Translation Series),
Josip Novakovich for “Tumbleweed” (Esplanade Books/Véhicule Press),
Ed O’Loughlin for “Minds of Winter” (House of Anansi Press),
Zoey Leigh Peterson for “Next Year, For Sure” (Doubleday Canada),
Michael Redhill for “Bellevue Square” (Doubleday Canada),
Deborah Willis for “The Dark and Other Love Stories” (Hamish Hamilton Canada),
Michelle Winters for “I Am a Truck” (Invisible Publishing).
Last year, Thien, a Vancouverborn, Montreal-based author was honoured for her novel “Do Not Say We Have Nothing,” which is set in China before, during and after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.
This year’s ceremony will be the first since Rabinovitch’s death last month at the age of 87.
“Canadian literature has lost a dear friend,” Thien said of Rabinovitch before announcing the long list.
At his funeral, former interim Liberal leader and Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae recalled their longtime friendship, which spanned more than 25 years.
Rae said he came to know the beloved businessman as a philanthropist and lover of the arts, passions that led to the creation of a lasting literary legacy with the celebrated Giller Prize.