Man Booker Prize has announced its winner for this year. English author Hilary Mantel has been given £50,000 for her novel ‘Wolf hall’.
"Set in England during the reign of King VIII, Mantel explores the political and religious scandel surrounding his desire to marry Anne Boleyn in search of a male heir. She does this through the eyes of an unlikely sympathetic protagonist Thomas Moore, who engineered the English Reformation."
Parramatta City Library has copies of Wolf hall available for loan.
Herta Muller, a Romanian born German author, has won 2009 Nobel Literature Prize. She worked in a factory under Nicolae Ceausescu’s oppressive regime. Now she lives in Germany.
Her debut novel is the collection of short stories Niederungen (1982) which was published outside of Romania, in Germany. in the same year, Drückender Tango was published in Romania. In these two works, Müller depicts life in a small, German-speaking village and the corruption, intolerance and repression to be found there.
The novels Der Fuchs war damals schon der Jäger (1992), Herztier (1994; The Land of Green Plums, 1996) and Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet (1997; The Appointment, 2001) give, with chiselled details, a portrait of daily life in a stagnated dictatorship. Müller has given guest lectures at universities, colleges and other venues in Paderborn, Warwick, Hamburg, Swansea, Gainsville (Florida), Kassel, Göttingen, Tübingen and Zürich among other places. She lives in Berlin. Since 1995 she has served as a member of Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, in Darmstadt.
Nobel Organization gives this comment on Muller’s works
Works in English
The Passport / translated by Martin Chalmers. – London : Serpent’s Tail, 1989. – Translation of Der Mensch ist ein großer Fasan auf der Welt The Land of Green Plums / translated by Michael Hofmann. – New York : Metropolitan Books, 1996. – Translation of HerztierTraveling on One Leg / translated from the German by Valentina Glajar and André Lefevere. – Evanston, Ill. : Northwestern University Press, 1998. – Translation of Reisende auf einem Bein
The Appointment / translated by Michael Hulse and Philip Boehm. – New York : Metropolitan Books, 2001. – Translation of Heute wär ich mir lieber nicht begegnet
Source: http://nobelprize.org/index.html
Today the library’s First Wed Reading Group discussed the book ‘Diary of a bad year‘ by J. M. Coetzee.
It is a novel with a very different format. The book combines non-fiction writings with a fictional plot to create an amazing account of John Coetzee’s experiences and beliefs. The story of an old gentleman Senor C, a writer, who is writing articles on range of topics from politics, religions, and ethics to climate change, for a German publisher, forms the first half of the book. When Senor C meets his neighbour, 29 years old attractive girl, Anya who lives with her boyfriend Alan, a 42 years old investment consultant the plot becomes centred on the relationship between these three people and is then paralleled with Senor’s essay writings that come to form the second part of the book.A member from the reading group said that she had to keep two bookmarks to make sure that both the fictional and nonfictional parts were read. Some felt it was a little bit hard to concentrate on because of the unusual format. Some enjoyed the read and thought the book was a refection of Coetzee himself. People all agreed that the book certainly made them think about some big issues and it stimulated the group to have a vigorous and interesting debate.
J. M. Coetzee is a 2003 literature Nobel winner and has written numerous books. He has taken up residence in Australia in recent years.