Category: Book Prizes (Page 1 of 4)

It’s back! One of my favourite prizes has just announced its shortlist of books for the award. They have scaled back the number of categories this year, I guess they are feeling the pinch along with everyone else. But I am thrilled that they are still going, even in a lesser form. So here are the books:

The Last Overland – Alex Bescoby

In 1955, Attenborough, then a young TV producer, was approached by six recent university graduates determined to drive the entire length of ‘Eurasia’, from London to Singapore. It was the unclimbed Everest of motoring – many had tried, none had succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave the expedition enough film reel to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity. Tim’s book, The First Overland, soon became the Bible of the overlanding religion. Inspired by the First Overland, Alex made contact with now eighty-six-year-old Tim and together they planned an epic recreation of the original trip, this time from Singapore to London. Their goal was to complete the legendary journey started more than sixty years ago in the original Oxford Land Rover. In awe of the unstoppable Tim, and haunted by his own grandfather’s decline, Alex and his team soon finds themselves battling rough roads, breakdowns and Oxford’s constant leaky roof to discover a world changed for the better – and worse – since the first expedition.

I am really looking forward to reading this. It ticks three boxes for me, travel, Land Rovers and epic adventure. Didn’t realise that it was a C4 series until a friend let me know., and I am going to have to get hold of the first book to read too!

High: A Journey Across the Himalayas Through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China – Erika Fatland

The Himalayas meander for more than two thousand kilometres through many different countries, from Pakistan to Myanmar via Nepal, India, Tibet and Bhutan, where the world religions of Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism are interspersed with ancient shamanic beliefs. Countless languages and vastly different cultures exist in these isolated mountain valleys. Modernity and tradition collide, while the great powers fight for influence.

We have read about climbers and adventurers on their way up Mount Everest, and about travellers on a spiritual quest to remote Buddhist monasteries. Here, however, the focus is on the communities of these Himalayan valleys, those who live and work in this extraordinary region. As Erika Fatland introduces us to the people she meets along her journey, and in particular the women, she takes us on a vivid and dizzying expedition at altitude through incredible landscapes and dramatic, unknown histories. Skilfully weaving together the politics, geography, astrology, theology and ecology of this vast region, she also explores some of the most volatile human conflicts of our times.

With her unique gift for listening, and for storytelling, she has become one of the most exciting travel writers of her generation.

I have her first two books and this was on my TBR already, but I am probably going to buy a copy of this

The Po: An Elegy for Italy’s Longest River – Tobias Jones

A captivating journey along the iconic River Po and through Italian history, society and culture.

The Po is the longest river in Italy, travelling for 652 kilometres from one end of the country to the other. It rises by the French border in the Alps and meanders the width of the entire peninsula to the Adriatic Sea in the east. Flowing next to many of Italy’s most exquisite cities – Ferrara, Mantova, Parma, Cremona, Pavia and Torino – the river is a part of the national psyche, as iconic to Italy as the Thames is to England or the Mississippi to the USA.

For millennia, the Po was a vital trading route and a valuable source of tax revenue, fiercely fought over by rival powers. It was also moat protecting Italy from invaders from the north, from Hannibal to Holy Roman Emperors. It breached its banks so frequently that its floodplain swamps were homes to outlaws and itinerants, to eccentrics and experimental communities. But as humans radically altered the river’s hydrology, those floodplains became important places of major industries and agricultures, the source of bricks, timber, silk, hemp, cement, caviar, mint, flour and risotto rice.

Tobias Jones travels the length of the river against the current, gathering stories of battles, writers, cuisines, entertainers, religious minorities and music. Both an ecological lament and a celebration of the resourcefulness and resilience of the people of the Po, the book opens a window onto a stunning, but now neglected, part of Italy.

I read this back in September and thought it was really good. My review is here

The Slow Road to Tehran – Rebecca Lowe

One woman, one bike and one richly entertaining, perception-altering journey of discovery.

In 2015, as the Syrian War raged and the refugee crisis reached its peak, Rebecca Lowe set off on her bicycle across the Middle East. Driven by a desire to learn more about this troubled region and its relationship with the West, Lowe’s 11,000-kilometre journey took her through Europe to Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, the Gulf and finally to Iran.

It was an odyssey through landscapes and history that captured her heart, but also a deeply challenging cycle across mountains, deserts and repressive police states that nearly defeated her. Plagued by punctures and battling temperatures ranging from -6 to 48C, Lowe was rescued frequently by farmers and refugees, villagers and urbanites alike, and relied almost entirely on the kindness and hospitality of locals to complete this living portrait of the modern Middle East.

This is her evocative, deeply researched and often very funny account of her travels – and the people, politics and culture she encountered.

‘Terrifically compelling … bursting with humour, adventure and insight into the rich landscapes and history of the Middle East. Lowe recounts the beauty, kindnesses and complexities of the lands she travels through with an illuminating insight. A wonderful new travel writer.’ Sir Ranulph Fiennes

I thought that this was another really good book when I read it back in July, but I still haven’t typed my notes up into a review as yet! Oops

Crossed Off the Map: Travels in Bolivia – Shafik Meghji

Blending travel writing, history and reportage, Crossed off the Map: Travels in Bolivia journeys from the Andes to the Amazon to explore Bolivia’s turbulent past and contemporary challenges. It tells the story of the country’s profound and unexpected influence on the wider world over the last 500 years – fragments of history largely forgotten beyond its borders. Once home to one of the wealthiest cities on Earth, Bolivia kickstarted globalisation, helped to power Europe’s economic growth and trigger dynastic collapse in China, and played host to everyone from Che Guevara to Butch Cassidy.

The book also explores how ordinary Bolivians in and around the world’s highest city, largest salt flat, richest silver mine and most biodiverse national park are coping with some of the touchstone issues of the 21st century: the climate emergency, populism, mass migration, indigenous rights, national identity, rapid urbanisation, and the ‘war on drugs’.

In its pages, award-winning journalist and travel writer Shafik Meghji illuminates the dramatic landscapes, distinct cultures and diverse peoples of a country that – in the words of one interviewee – ‘was the building block of the modern world, but is now lost in time’.

This looks really good, but haven’t got a copy of this as yet. Might have to buy this one too.

Walking with Nomads – Alice Morrison

Adventurer and TV presenter Alice Morrison takes the reader on three remarkable and inspirational journeys across Morocco, from the Sahara to the Atlas mountains, to reveal the growing challenges faced by our planet.

Accompanied only by three Amazigh Muslim men and their camels, Scottish explorer Alice Morrison set off to find a hidden world. During her journey along the Draa river, she encountered dinosaur footprints and discovered a lost city, as well as what looked like a map of an ancient spaceship, all the while trying to avoid landmines, quicksand and the deadly horned viper.

Few places better illustrate the reality of climate change and the encroachment of the desert than a dried-out riverbed, but this also means a constant search for the next source of water. Meeting other nomads as they travel, Alice also gets to hear a side of their lives few ever access, as the women would never be allowed to speak to men from outside their community. They explain the challenges of giving birth and raising children in the wilderness. As the journey continues, Alice learns to enjoy goat’s trachea sausages, gets a saliva shower from Hamish the camel as he blows out his sex bubble, and shares riddles round the camp fire with her fellow travellers.

Walking with Nomads reveals the transformative richness of the desert and the mountains, providing a total escape from everyday concerns, but it also shows how the ancient world of the nomad is under threat as never before.

I really enjoyed her first book, My 1001 Nights that I reviewed here. I have this from the library and I am going to bump it up my list to read

My Family and Other Enemies: Life and Travels in Croatia’s Hinterland –  Mary Novakovich

My Family and Other Enemies is part travelogue, part memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia. Mary Novakovich explores her ongoing relationship with the region of Lika in central Croatia, where her parents were born.. ‘Lika is little known to most travellers – apart from Plitvice Lakes National Park and the birthplace of Nikola Tesla’ she says. ‘It’s a region of wild beauty that has been battered by centuries of conflict. Used as a buffer zone between the Habsburg and Ottoman empires for hundreds of years, Lika became a land of war and warriors. And when Yugoslavia started to disintegrate in 1991, it was here where some of the first shots were fired.’
Shipped off to Lika as a child during the supposedly golden years of Tito to stay with relatives she barely knew, Novakovich has been revisiting Croatia ever since, researching the story of her family’s often harrowing life: in 1941 her aunt was the only survivor of Serbs massacred by Croatian fascists; and her mother saved her grandmother from being buried alive when she was thought to be dead from typhus.
Amidst adversity there is resilience and laughter, too, with plenty of light to balance the shade. Eccentric and entertaining characters abound, showing typically sardonic Balkan humour. And, this being the Balkans, much of daily life revolves around food, which features prominently. Throughout, aspects of Croatian history that relate to Lika are woven into the narrative to give the story some much-needed context. And in recounting her own family’s tumultuous history, Novakovich opens up a world that is little known outside the Balkans, telling the stories of people whose experiences weren’t widely reported at the time, when the devastation in Croatia was superseded by the Bosnian conflict and media attention moved elsewhere.

More of a family memoir than strictly travel, Mary’s book is still worth reading for a good insight into the people of Croatia. My review for this is here.

In The Shadow of the Mountain – Silvia Vasquez-Lavado

You don’t conquer a mountain. you surrender to it one step at a time.

Despite a high-flying career, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado knew she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, and hiding her sexuality from her family, she was repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child.

When her mother called her home to Peru, she knew something finally had to change. It did. Silvia began to climb.

Something about the sheer size of the mountains, the vast emptiness and the nearness of death, woke her up. And then, she took her biggest pain to the biggest mountain: Everest. The ‘Mother of the World’ allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn’t go alone. Trekking with her to Base Camp, were five troubled young women on an odyssey that helped each confront their personal trauma, and whose strength and community propelled Silvia forward…

Beautifully written and deeply moving, In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of compassion, humility, and strength, inspiring us all to find have faith in our own heroism and resilience.

This has been on my TBR for a while now. My library has a copy which I have ordered now.

Some thoughts

I thought that this is a really good shortlist. There are five women authors this year compared to two on last year’s shortlist. There are also eight books rather than five too. Of the three that I have read so far, Rebecca Lowe’s is my favourite, but I am going to get hold of the others to make a considered opinion. I have been a judge twice on these awards and picking a winner is not always easy, so I am not going to commit to a favourite until I have read them all.

Has anyone else read any of these? If so what did you think of them?

Does anyone fancy forming a little group to shadow-judge these?

Yesterday the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize longlist was announced. There is an impressive and diverse list of contenders from across the globe, reflecting the diversity of the UK. 

They are choosing to celebrate voices from around the world that reflect voices from the margins and not just from the mainstream. From Sri Lanka to Trinidad, Texas, and Ireland via the Middle East, this year’s longlist features a powerful, international collection of writers who are offering platforms for under-represented voices.

Through themes of identity, conflict and love, the 2022 longlist comprises eight novels, two poetry collections and two short story collections:

·       A Passage North – Anuk Arudpragasam (Granta)

Anuk Arudpragasam was born in Colombo and currently lives between Sri Lanka and India. His debut novel, The Story of a Brief Marriage, won the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize as well as the Internationaler Literaturpreis. His second novel, A Passage North, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2021. He received a doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University in 2019. Follow him on Twitter @sirukavi

·       What Noise Against the Cane – Desiree Bailey (Yale University Press)

Desiree Bailey is the author of What Noise Against the Cane (Yale University Press, 2021), which won the 2020 Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry. She is also the author of the fiction chapbook In Dirt or Saltwater (O’clock Press, 2016) and has short stories and poems published in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Short Fiction, Callaloo, the Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. Desiree is from Trinidad and Tobago, and Queens, New York. She currently lives in Providence, RI. Follow her on Twitter @DesireeCBailey

·       Keeping the House – Tice Cin (And Other Stories)

Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist from north London. A London Writers Award-winner, her work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Extra Teeth and Skin Deep, and has been commissioned by organisations such as the Battersea Arts Centre and St Paul’s Cathedral. An alumnus of the Barbican Young Poets programme, she now creates digital art as part of Design Yourself – a collective based at the Barbican Centre – exploring what it means to be human at a time of great technological change. A producer and DJ, she has released an EP, Keeping the House, to accompany her debut novel. Follow her on Twitter @ticecin

·       Auguries of a Minor God – Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe (Faber)

Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe is a poet, pacifist and fabulist. Born in India, she grew up across the Middle East, Europe and North America before calling Ireland home. Founder of the Play It Forward Fellowships, she serves as poetry editor at Skein Press and Fallow Media, contributing editor for the Stinging Fly and an advisory board member of Ledbury Poetry Critics Ireland. She is the recipient of a Next Generation Artist Award in Literature from the Arts Council of Ireland and the inaugural Ireland Chair of Poetry Student Award. Follow her on Twitter @AriaEipe

·       The Sweetness of Water – Nathan Harris (Tinder Press/Headline)

Nathan Harris is a Michener fellow at the University of Texas. He was awarded the Kidd prize, as judged by Anthony Doerr, and was also a finalist for the Tennessee Williams fiction prize. THE SWEETNESS OF WATER is his debut novel. He lives in Austin, Texas. Follow @TinderPress for more information.

·       No One is Talking About This – Patricia Lockwood (Bloomsbury Circus)

Patricia Lockwood is the author of four books, including the 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This, an international bestseller which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and translated into 20 languages. Her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and was named one of the Guardian‘s 100 best books of the 21st century. She also has two poetry collections, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (2014) and Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (2012). Lockwood’s work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. She lives in Savannah, Georgia. Follow her on Twitter @TriciaLockwood

·       Milk Blood Heat – Dantiel W. Moniz (Atlantic Books)

Dantiel W. Moniz is the recipient of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction, the Cecelia Joyce Johnson Emerging Writer Award by the Key West Literary Seminars, and a Tin House Scholarship. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in the Paris Review, Tin House, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Yale Review, One Story, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern and elsewhere. Milk Blood Heat is her first book. She lives in Northeast Florida. Follow her on Twitter @dantielwmoniz

·       Hot Stew – Fiona Mozley (John Murray Press)

Fiona Mozley grew up in York and lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Elmet, won a Somerset Maugham Award and the Polari Prize. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Dublin Literary Award and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. In 2018 Fiona Mozley was shortlisted for the Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award. Follow her @fjmoz

·       Open Water – Caleb Azumah Nelson (Viking, Penguin General)

Caleb Azumah Nelson is a 27-year-old British-Ghanaian writer and photographer living in South East London. His photography has been shortlisted for the Palm Photo Prize and won the People’s Choice prize. His short story, PRAY, was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2020. His first novel, OPEN WATER, won the Costa First Novel Award and the Bad Form Book of the Year Award, was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year, and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize and the Desmond Elliott Prize. He was selected as a National Book Foundation ‘5 under 35’ honoree by Brit Bennett in 2021. Follow him on Twitter @CalebANelson

·       Acts of Desperation – Megan Nolan (Jonathan Cape)

Megan Nolan lives in London and was born in 1990 in Waterford, Ireland. Her essays, fiction and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The White Review, The Sunday Times, The Village Voice, The Guardian and in the literary anthology, Winter Papers. She writes a fortnightly column for the New Statesman. This is her first novel.

·       Peaces – Helen Oyeyemi (Faber)

Helen Oyeyemi is the author of The Icarus Girl, The Opposite House, White is for Witching (which won the Somerset Maugham Award), Mr Fox, Boy, Snow, Bird, Gingerbread and the short story collection What is Not Yours is Not Yours. In 2013, Helen was included in Granta‘s Best of Young British Novelists.

·       Filthy Animals – Brandon Taylor (Daunt Books Publishing)

Brandon Taylor is the author of the acclaimed novel Real Life, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and the Foyles Fiction Book of the Year. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow in fiction. Follow him on Twitter @blgtylr

Key Dates for the Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize 2022

–          Longlist Announcement – 3^rd February

–          Shortlist Announcement – 31^st March

–          British Library Event with shortlisted authors, London – 11^th May

–          Winner Announcement and award ceremony, Swansea – 12^th May

Launched in 2006, the annual Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is one of the most prestigious awards for young writers, aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide. It celebrates and nurtures international literary excellence. Worth £20,000, it is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as one of the world’s largest literary prizes for young writers. Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer, Dylan Thomas, and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. One of the most influential, internationally-renowned writers of the mid-twentieth century, the prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today and nurture the talents of tomorrow.

ABOUT THE JUDGES

Namita Gokhale is a writer and festival director. She is the author of twenty works of fiction and non-fiction. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. Her latest novel The Blind Matriarch examines the Indian joint family against the backdrop of the pandemic. Jaipur Journals, published in January 2020, is set in the vibrant Jaipur Literature Festival, of which Gokhale is one of the co-founder-directors.

Her work spans various genres, including novels, short stories, Himalayan studies, mythology, several anthologies, books for young readers, and a recent play. Gokhale is the recipient of various prizes and awards, including the prestigious Sahitya Akademi (National Academy of Literature) Award 2021 for her novel Things to Leave Behind.
Follow her on Twitter @NamitaGokhale_

Rachel Trezise is a novelist and playwright from the Rhondda Valley. Her debut novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl won a place on the Orange Futures List in 2002. In 2006 her first short fiction collection Fresh Apples won the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her second short fiction collection Cosmic Latte won the Edge Hill Prize Readers Award in 2014. Her most recent play ‘Cotton Fingers’ toured Ireland and Wales and won the Summerhall Lustrum Award at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2019. Her most recent novel Easy Meat came out in 2021.

Alan Bilton is the author of three novels, The End of The Yellow House (Watermark 2020), The Known and Unknown Sea (Cillian, 2014), and The Sleepwalkers’ Ball (Alcemi, 2009), described by one critic as ‘Franz Kafka meets Mary Poppins’. He is also the author of a collection of surrealist short stories, Anywhere Out of the World. (Cillian, 2016) as well as books on silent film comedy, contemporary fiction, and the 1920s. He was a Hay Festival Writer at Work in 2016 and 2017 and teaches creative writing, literature and film at Swansea University.@ABiltonAuthor

Irenosen Okojie is a Nigerian British author whose bold, experimental works create vivid narratives that play with form and language. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish and short story collections Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch have won and been shortlisted for multiple awards. Her work has been optioned for the screen. A fellow and Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, Irenosen is the winner of the 2020 AKO Caine Prize for her story, Grace Jones. She was awarded an MBE For Services to Literature in 2021.

Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist whose sixth collection of poetry, Notes on the Sonnets, won the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2021. His fifth, Cain, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize in 2017. His novels, The Transition and The Answer To Everything are available from 4th Estate. He lectures at the University of Birmingham.

Yesterday one of my favourite books prizes announced their shortlists for their various prizes and her they all are:

Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year

Fifty Sounds by Polly Barton

Minarets in the Mountains by Tharik Hussain

Small Bodies of Water by Nina Mingya Powles

The Amur River by Colin Thubron

Wars of the Interior by Joseph Zarate

Food and Drink Travel Book of the Year

Eating to Extinction: The World’s Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them by Dan Saladino

From Gujarat with Love: 100 Authentic Indian Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes by Vina Patel

How Wild Things Are: Cooking, Fishing and Hunting at the Bottom of the World by Analiese Gregory

Ripe Figs: Recipes and Stories from the Eastern Mediterranean by Yasmin Khan

Sumac: Recipes and Stories from Syria by Anas Atassi

Photographic Travel Book of the Year

Epic Train Journeys by Monisha Rajesh

Let’s Get Lost by Finn Beales

Only Us by Stuart Dunn

Southern Light by Dave Brosha

The Travel Photographer’s Way by Nori Jemil

Illustrated Travel Book of the Year

The Atlas of Unusual Languages by Zoran Niikolic

Antarctic Atlas by Peter Fretwell

Atlas of Imagined Places by Matt Brown

Black Girls Take World by Georgina Lawton

India: The Passenger

Wild Waters by Susanne Masters

Fiction with a Sense of Place

Barcelona Dreaming by Rupert Thomson

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani

The High House by Jessie Greengrass

The Paper Palace by Miranda Cowley Heller

Children’s Travel Book of the Year

Bandoola by William Grill

Journey to the Last River by Teddy Keen

Lionheart Girl by Yada Badoe

Spin to Survive Frozen Mountain by Emily Hawkins

Wild Child by Dara McAnulty

The Shark Caller by Zillah Bethell

Bradt Travel Guides New Travel Writer of the Year

“Waiting for Wilma” by Jane Adams

“Ghar Ghosts” by Ruth Cox

“The Quiet of Switzerland” by Neasa Murphy

I have some of them already, but my TBR has now got much much longer!

And we have a shortlist:

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In ” The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate ,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary ” Exhalation ,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in ” The Lifecycle of Software Objects ,” a woman cares for an artificial intelligence over twenty years, elevating a faddish digital pet into what might be a true living being. Also included are two brand-new stories: ” Omphalos ” and ” Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom .”

In this fantastical and elegant collection, Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth—What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human?—and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.

Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Pérez

Imagine a world where your phone is too big for your hand, where your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body, where in a car accident you are 47% more likely to be seriously injured, where every week the countless hours of work you do are not recognised or valued. If any of this sounds familiar, chances are that you’re a woman.

Invisible Women shows us how, in a world largely built for and by men, we are systematically ignoring half the population. It exposes the gender data gap – a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women’s lives.

Award-winning campaigner and writer Caroline Criado Perez brings together for the first time an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the impact this has on their health and well-being. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women. In making the case for change, this powerful and provocative book will make you see the world anew.

Constellations by Sinéad Gleeson

I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles.

How do you tell the story of life that is no one thing? How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? And how do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In these powerful and daring essays, Sinead Gleeson does that very thing. In doing so she delves into a range of subjects: art, illness, ghosts, grief, and our very ways of seeing. In writing that is in tradition of some of our finest writers such as Olivia Laing, Maggie O’Farrell, and Maggie Nelson, and yet still in her own spirited, warm voice, Gleeson takes us on a journey that is both personal and yet universal in its resonance.

The Nocturnal Brain by Guy Leschziner

For Dr. Guy Leschziner’s patients, there is no rest for the weary in mind and body. Insomnia, narcolepsy, night terrors, sleep apnea, and sleepwalking are just a sampling of conditions afflicting sufferers who cannot sleep–and their experiences in trying are the stuff of nightmares. Demoniac hallucinations frighten people into paralysis. Restless legs rock both the sleepless and their sleeping partners with unpredictable and uncontrollable kicking. Out-of-sync circadian rhythms confuse the natural body clock’s days and nights.

Then there are the extreme cases. A woman in a state of deep sleep who gets dressed, unlocks her car, and drives for several miles before returning to bed. The man who has spent decades cleaning out kitchens while “sleep-eating.” The teenager prone to the serious, yet unfortunately nicknamed “Sleeping Beauty Syndrome” stuck in a cycle of excessive unconsciousness, binge eating, and uncharacteristic displays of aggression and hyper-sexuality while awake.

With compassionate stories of his patients and their conditions, Dr. Leschziner illustrates the neuroscience behind our sleeping minds, revealing the many biological and psychological factors necessary in getting the rest that will not only maintain our physical and mental health, but improve our cognitive abilities and overall happiness.

The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman

Providing a cover for our delicate and intricate bodies, the skin is our largest and fastest-growing organ. We see it, touch it, and live in it every day. It is a habitat for a mesmerizingly complex world of micro-organisms and physical functions that are vital to our health and our survival. It is also a waste removal plant, a warning system for underlying disease and a dynamic immune barrier to infection. One of the first things people see about us, skin is crucial to our sense of identity, providing us with social significance and psychological meaning. And yet our skin and the fascinating way it functions is largely unknown to us. In prose as lucid as his research underlying it is rigorous, blending in memorable stories from the past and from his own medical experience, Monty Lyman has written a revelatory book exploring our outer surface that will surprise and enlighten in equal measure. Through the lenses of science, sociology, and history–on topics as diverse as the mechanics and magic of touch (how much goes on in the simple act of taking keys out of a pocket and unlocking a door is astounding), the close connection between the skin and the gut, what happens instantly when one gets a paper cut, and how a midnight snack can lead to sunburn–Lyman leads us on a journey across our most underrated and unexplored organ and reveals how our skin is far stranger, more wondrous, and more complex than we have ever imagined.

War Doctor by David Nott

For more than 25 years, surgeon David Nott has volunteered in some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones. From Sarajevo under siege in 1993 to clandestine hospitals in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, he has carried out lifesaving operations in the most challenging conditions, and with none of the resources of a major metropolitan hospital. He is now widely acknowledged as the most experienced trauma surgeon in the world.

War Doctor is his extraordinary story, encompassing his surgeries in nearly every major conflict zone since the end of the Cold War, as well as his struggles to return to a “normal” life and routine after each trip. Culminating in his recent trips to war-torn Syria—and the untold story of his efforts to help secure a humanitarian corridor out of besieged Aleppo to evacuate some 50,000 people—War Doctor is a blend of medical memoir, personal journey, and nonfiction thriller that provides unforgettable, at times raw, insight into the human toll of war.

Have you read any of these? Do you now want to read them? Let me know in the comments

On Sunday I finished the last of the 13 books on this year’s Wainwright Prize Longlist. There are some cracking books on there covering subjects as diverse as gulls to moles, wild swimming and gipsy parking places. London features twice with sexual adventures in Epping Forrest and ghost trees in Poplar and there are two books on what is happening to our wildlife and the possibilities of what might happen if we change. We head under the sea to Doggerland and deep beneath the surface in Underland. Unusually there is a fiction book on the longlist, however, Lanny is a disturbing read but closely linked to the pagan landscape that we can still see if we look. Lastly, there is a book on the pleasures of walking and another about the loss of coastal landscape on the east coast of Britain.

There were a few surprises on this list, and I think that it was missing some that I read and really enjoyed last year, for example, Under the Rock and The Pull of the River to name but two.

I do not envy the judges selecting the shortlist but it is announced this morning. There is an event tonight at Waterstones Picadilly and I am going to be there. I am really looking forward to meeting the authors and will be taking a small pile of books to be signed too.

Links to all of my reviews are below:

Underland by Robert Macfarlane

Wilding: The Return Of Nature To A British Farm by Isabella Tree

Lanny by Max Porter

Landfill by Tim Dee

Time Song: Searching For Doggerland by Julia Blackburn

Our Place: Can We Save Britain’s Wildlife Before It Is Too Late? by Mark Cocker

How To Catch A Mole And Find Yourself In Nature by Marc Hamer

The Stopping Places: A Journey Through Gypsy Britain by Damian Le Bas

Thinking On My Feet by Kate Humble

Wild Woman Swimming by Lynne Roper

Out of the Woods by Luke Turner

The Easternmost House by Juliet Blaxland

Ghost Trees: Nature and People in a London Parish by Bob Gilbert

My favourites on the list are, Wilding, Landfill, Underland and Our Place. Closely followed by Lanny and Wild Woman Swimming.

Who do you think is going to be on the shortlist?

Who do you want to be on the shortlist?

This is the second year that I have been on the Shadow Panel for the Wellcome Book Prize and for a list of books that vary in content style and subject you can’t really get any better. It is their tenth anniversary too, so if you want to find a book that is worth reading that had some aspect of health as its core theme, then trawling their backlist of long and shortlisted titles is a great place to start.

The shortlisted books were:

Amateur by Thomas Page McBee

Heart: A history by Sandeep Jauhar

The Trauma Cleaner by Sarah Krasnostein

Mind on Fire by Arnold Thomas Fanning

Murmur by Will Eaves

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

All five of us read all of the shortlisted books and at the end score them from 6 down to 1. This year it wasn’t as clear cut as last year, as each of us had our favourite books, but with the scored totted up our winner this year was:

And it won by just a single point! It is well worth reading, but not when you are having your tea.

Congratulations to Sarah Krasnostein. Looking forward to hearing who is the official winner on Wednesday too, and I am hoping I can get the time off work to go up and hear it live.

Earlier today the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize was announced. The shortlist was chosen by a judging panel chaired by Swansea University Professor Dai Smith CBE with Professor Kurt Heinzelman; Books Editor for the BBC Di Speirs and award-winning novelist Kit de Waal.

The 6 shortlisted books comprise 5 novels and 1 collection of short stories and they are here:

American-Ghanaian writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (27) for his debut short story collection Friday Black (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (US) and Riverrun (UK)) which explores what it’s like to grow up as a black male in America, and whose powerful style of writing has been likened to George Saunders. He is from Spring Valley, New York and graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. He was the ’16-’17 Olive B. O’Connor fellow in fiction at Colgate University. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Guernica, Compose: A Journal of Simply Good Writing, Printer’s Row, Gravel, and The Breakwater Review, where he was selected by ZZ Packer as the winner of the 2nd Annual Breakwater Review Fiction Contest. Friday Black is his first book.

Debut novelist Zoe Gilbert for Folk (Bloomsbury Publishing) which was developed from her fascination in ancient folklore and the resurgence of nature writing. She has previously won the Costa Short Story Award in 2014. Zoe Gilbert is the winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2014. Her work has appeared on BBC Radio 4, and in anthologies and journals in the UK and internationally. She has taken part in writing projects in China and South Korea for the British Council, and she is completing a PhD on folk tales in contemporary fiction. The co-founder of London Lit Lab, which provides writing courses and mentoring for writers, she lives on the coast in Kent.

British-Sri-Lankan debut novelist, Guy Gunaratne for In Our Mad and Furious City (Tinder Press, Headline), longlisted for The Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for The Goldsmiths Prize, The Gordon Burn Prize as well as the Writers Guild Awards. He lives between London, UK and Malmö, Sweden. His first novel In Our Mad and Furious City was longlisted for The Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for The Goldsmiths Prize, The Gordon Burn Prize as well as the Writers Guild Awards. He has worked as a journalist and documentary filmmaker covering human rights stories around the world.

Louisa Hall with her latest book Trinity (Ecco) which tackles the complex life of the Father of the Atomic Bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer through seven fictional characters. Louisa Hall grew up in Philadelphia. She is the author of the novels Speak and The Carriage House, and her poems have been published in The New Republic, Southwest Review, and other journals. She is a professor at the University of Iowa, and the Western Writer in Residence at Montana State University. Trinity is her third novel.

For the second time Sarah Perry has been shortlisted for the Prize this time for Melmoth (Serpent’s Tail), one of The Observer’s Best Fiction Books of the Year 2018, and a masterpiece of moral complexity, asking us profound questions about mercy, redemption, and how to make the best of our conflicted world. Sarah Perry was born in Essex in 1979. She has been the writer in residence at Gladstone’s Library and the UNESCO World City of Literature Writer in Residence in Prague. After Me Comes the Flood, her first novel, was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Folio Prize and won the East Anglian Book of the Year Award in 2014. Her latest novel, The Essex Serpent, was a number one bestseller in hardback, Waterstones Book of the Year 2016, the British Book Awards Book of the Year 2017, was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award and Dylan Thomas Award, and longlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017. Her work has been translated into twenty languages. She lives in Norwich.

Zimbabwean debut novelist Novuyo Rosa Tshuma with her wildly inventive and darkly humorous novel House of Stone (Atlantic Books) which reveals the mad and glorious death of colonial Rhodesia and the bloody birth of modern Zimbabwe. She grew up in Zimbabwe and has lived in South Africa and the USA. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short fiction has been featured in numerous anthologies, and she was awarded the 2014 Herman Charles Bosman Prize for the best literary work in English

The winner will be announced on Thursday 16th May at Swansea University’s Great Hall, just after International Dylan Thomas Day on 14th May.

The International Dylan Thomas Prize was launched in 2006. It is one of the most prestigious awards for young writers, aimed at encouraging raw creative talent worldwide. It celebrates and nurtures international literary excellence. Worth £30,000, it is one of the UK’s most prestigious literary prizes as well as the world’s largest literary prize for young writers. Awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, the Prize celebrates the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer, Dylan Thomas, and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. One of the most influential, internationally-renowned writers of the mid-twentieth century, the prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today and nurture the talents of tomorrow.

Follow Dylan Thomas Prize on Twitter here: @dylanthomprize

Last night at midnight (no I don’t know why midnight either) the Wellcome Prize announced their shortlist, and the books that they have chosen are:

Amateur: A true story about what makes a man by Thomas Page McBee

Heart: A history by Sandeep Jauhar

Mind on Fire: A memoir of madness and recovery by Arnold Thomas Fanning

Murmur by Will Eaves

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

The Trauma Cleaner: One woman’s extraordinary life in death, decay and disaster by Sarah Krasnostein

The shortlist has two novels on it this year, Murmur by Will Eaves and My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, neither of which I have read yet but have them reserved from the library.  The remainder of the shortlist is non-fiction. Two of the authors are writing about gender, with Thomas Page McBee looking at masculinity and violence as he becomes the first trans man to box at Madison Square Garden in Amateur. Sarah Krasnostein’s book, The Trauma Cleaner, is a biography about Sandra Pankhurst who was a husband, father, drag queen, sex worker, wife – and how her journey through childhood abuse, trauma and transphobic hostility has led her to care to both the living and the dead.

 Heart by Sandeep Jauhar is fairly self-explanatory as to what it is about and Mind on Fire is Arnold Thomas Fanning personal story of his battle with mania, psychosis and severe depression and how he has survived the mental torment. 

As a Shadow Panel, comprising Rebecca from Bookish Beck, Annabel from Annabookbel, Laura from Dr. Laura Tisdall and Clare from A Little Blog of Books we had an opportunity to vote on the favourites that we had and from that chose seven books for our shortlist: