Warwick Prize for writing defines eclectic
Jan 23 2009 by Lorne Jackson, Birmingham Post
It may not be the most prestigious literary award in the country ... yet.
But the Warwick Prize for writing, which announced its first shortlist yesterday, is certainly the most eccentric.
The unique competition, organised and funded by the University of Warwick, is open to all genres and nationalities, as long as the work is published in English. Which means a volume of haikus, by a Japanese poet, could compete against a weighty tome on physics by an American rocket scientist.
There is only one area where the prize shows a smidgen of conventionality; a substantial sum will be awarded to a lucky author when the winner is announced on February 24.
Competing for the £50,000 prize are a scientist, a music critic, a novelist and political journalists. The diverse range of themes in the six-book shortlist includes global political corruption, female psychology, scientific theories on religion and a Spanish literary fiction puzzle.
The judges also boast a range of talents. On the panel are novelist, Maya Jaggi; translator and academic, Maureen Freely; Britain’s first book blogger, Stephen Mitchelmore; and University of Warwick mathematician, Professor Ian Stewart. Chairman of the judges is cult fantasy author and Warwick creative writing lecturer, China Miéville.
He said: ‘Working through a long list of such quality and variety, selecting a few excellent books from so many, has been exactly the kind of agonised pleasure you’d think. Every one of the titles on this shortlist is here because all the judges agreed it is something new.”
The titles are: Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 by Lisa Appignanesi; The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed Bishop Gerardi? by Francisco Goldman; Reinventing the Sacred by Stuart A Kauffman; The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein; The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century by Alex Ross and Montano’s Malady by Enrique Vila-Matas.
