The finalists for several literary awards were recently announced.
Judges have selected five books published in 2004 as finalists for the 2005 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. They are Jerome Charyn for The Green Lantern (Thunder's Mouth Press), Edwidge Danticat for The Dew Breaker (Knopf), Ha Jin for War Trash (Pantheon), Marilynne Robinson for Gilead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Steve Yarbrough for Prisoners of War (Knopf). The judges are David Anthony Durham, Herbert Gold, and Kathryn Harrison. The winner, to be announced in April, will receive $15,000. Each finalist receives $5,000.
From a list of 147, ten books published in 2003 were recently shortlisted for the IMPAC Award. They are Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor (Grove Press), Diane Awerbuck's Gardening at Night (Secker and Warburg), Frances Itani's Deafening (Atlantic Monthly Press), Edward P. Jones's The Known World (Amistad), Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude (Doubleday), Douglas Glover's Elle (Goose Lane Editions), Shirley Hazzard's The Great Fire (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Lars-Saabye Christensen's The Half-Brother (Arcade Publishing), Christoph Hein's Willenbrock (Metropolitan Books), and Arnon Grunberg's Phantom Pain (Other Press). The award, worth 100,000 Euros (approximately $134,000) is given to honor a novel written in English or translated into English that makes a lasting contribution to world literature. It is sponsored by the City of Dublin Library in partnership with IMPAC, a management-productivity engineering company. The winner will be announced on June 15.
Five fiction writers were recently named finalists for the $15,000 Kiriyama Prize. They are Nadeem Aslam for Maps for Lost Lovers (Knopf), Rupa Bajwa for The Sari Shop (Norton), Ha Jin for War Trash (Pantheon), Kelly Ana Morey for Grace is Gone (Penguin), and Perumal Murugan for Seasons of the Palm (Rara Books). The winner of the prize, given for a book of fiction published in the previous year that contributes to "a fuller understanding among the nations and people of the Pacific Rim," will be announced on March 29.