19 Canadians nominated for $127K IMPAC Dublin prize

Esi Edugyan’s Giller Prize-winning Half-Blood Blues and Patrick de Witt’s Governor General’s Literary Award-winning The Sisters Brothers are among the 19 Canadian works in the running for the 100,000-euro ($127,000 Cdn) IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

A list of 154 books, nominated by libraries around the world, was released Monday by the Dublin City Public Libraries, which sponsors the international award.

The Sisters Brothers and Half-Blood Blues scooped up the biggest prizes of the Canadian literary scene in 2011.

Half-Blood Blues tells a story about the experiences of black jazz musicians in Nazi Germany and occupied France. De Witt’s comic western The Sisters Brothers also won the Writers’ Trust Prize for fiction and is to be adapted for the screen.

The 19 Canadians on the long list for the IMPAC prize:

• Dirty Feet by Edem Awumey of Montreal, translated from the original French by  Lazer Lederhendler, nominated by a Montreal public library.
• Tell It to the Trees, by Anita Rau Badami of Montreal, nominated by a library in Cape Town, South Africa.
• Beggar’s Feast, by Randy Boyagoda of Toronto, nominated by the Colombo public library in Sri Lanka.
• The Sisters Brothers by Patrick de Witt of Vancouver Island, nominated by libraries in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Cape Breton and Portland, Ore.
• Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan of Victoria, nominated by libraries in Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Saint John, N.B.
• The Reinvention of Love by Helen Humphreys of Kingston, Ont., nominated by the Gander, N.L. library.
• The Lightning Field, by Heather Jessup of Halifax, nominated by Halifax public libraries.
• A World Elsewhere, by Wayne Johnson, a St. John's-raised writer now living in Toronto, nominated by a library in St. John’s.
• The Return, by Dany Laferrière of Montreal, translated from French by David Homel, nominated by Halifax public libraries.
• A Possible Madness, by Frank Macdonald of Inverness, Cape Breton, nominated by a library in Saint John.
• The Town that Drowned, by Riel Nason of Quispamsis, N.B., nominated by a Saint John library.
• Niko by Dimitri Nasrallah of Montreal, nominated by a Montreal public library.
• The Cat’s Table by Michael Ondaatje, of Toronto, nominated by libraries in Belgium, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, Boston, Miami and Richmond, Va.
• Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul, by David Adams Richards of Newcastle, N.B., nominated by Ottawa Public Library.
• Easy to Like, by Edward Riche of St. John's, nominated by a library in St. John's.
• Dancing Lessons, by Olive Senior of Toronto, nominated by a library in Kingston, Jamaica.
• A Good Man by Guy Vanderhaeghe of Esterhazy, Sask., nominated by libraries in Toronto and Ottawa.
• Double Talk, by Patrick Warner, an Irish-born writer now living in St. John's, nominated by a St. John's library.
• Touch, by Alexi Zentner, a Canadian now based in Ithaca, N.Y., nominated by libraries in Cleveland and Nice, France.  

American writers dominated the list with 43 nominees, including Stephen King’s popular 11/22/63 about a time traveler trying to stop the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

There were 22 British writers nominated, among them Booker Prize winner Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending, which got the most submissions from libraries around the world.

The five judges for the prize will issue a short list on April 9, 2013, with the winner to be unveiled on June 6.