Contender: Rawi Hage is short listed for a Governor General's Literary Award, as well as the Scotiabank Giller Prize, for his novel De Niro's Game. (House of Anasi/Groundwood Books)
A few years back, I bumped into a Famous Canadian Writer at a post-Giller Awards party. She had just lost to a fellow novelist and was, as a result, tipsy and just the slightest bit bitter. When I expressed my disappointment at her defeat, she snapped, “Canadian publishing is just like high school and I didn’t get to be prom queen once again,” before heading to the bar for another drink.
If CanLit is indeed like high school, then this year’s book awards mark the revenge of the nerds. The English-language popular kids’ clique, represented by Wayne Johnston (The Custodian of Paradise), Margaret Atwood (Moral Disorder), David Adams Richards (The Friends of Meager Fortune), Dennis Bock (The Communist’s Daughter), Mary Lawson (The Other Side of the Bridge) and Alice Munro (The View from Castle Rock), was shut out of both the Scotiabank Giller Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award. (Munro pulled herself out of the running for the Giller when she signed on as a juror; Atwood’s English-to-French translators Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagné got the Governor General’s nod for L’Odyssée de Pénélope, their version of her The Penelopiad.)
Instead a group of relative unknowns is up for this year’s Giller Prize, while a slightly less obscure short list of mainly first- and second-time authors is vying for the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language fiction, which was announced on Oct. 16. This year’s $15,000 prize winner will be decided by a jury of three writers: Leon Rooke, Shani Mootoo and Donna Morrissey.
By design or by accident, the long-standing Governor General’s prize has often championed lower profile and more regionally diverse authors than the Giller Prize. This year is no exception. Of the nominees for the Governor General’s Award, only one is also on this year’s Giller short list — debut novelist Rawi Hage, whose timely novel De Niro’s Game is set in 1980s wartime Beirut. Short story writer Bill Gaston (Gargoyles) is a previous Giller nominee and might be the best-known name on the list, while Trevor Cole, nominated for his critically acclaimed second novel The Fearsome Particles, has a higher profile as a magazine writer than as a novelist.
Most notably — and what may stir up a tiny tempest of controversy, or at the very least some grumbling — there are no female writers on the short list. More than anything, that likely speaks to the jury’s confidence in Canadian women writers. When Atwood’s name is consistently bandied about for a Nobel Prize for Literature and Munro is considered by some to be the best living North American writer, a smart jury shouldn’t feel compelled to include a female writer to maintain appearances.
Whether this is a blip or a revolution, 2006’s Giller and Governor General’s jurors have brought 10 books to the attention of Canadian readers who might otherwise not have heard of them at all. And while some might still wonder if our national literature has yet to grow out of its infancy, these new and noteworthy emerging writers prove that CanLit has made it at least as far as high school.
The short list for the 2006 Governor General’s Literary Award for English fiction:
The Law of Dreams by Peter Behrens (House of Anansi)
The Montreal-to-Maine transplant and first-time novelist based his epic story of one young man’s journey from Ireland to America during the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) on his own family’s history.
The Fearsome Particles by Trevor Cole (McClelland & Stewart)
The award-winning Hamilton, Ont., magazine writer turned novelist was nominated for a Governor General’s Award in 2004 for his fiction debut Norman Bray in the Performance of his Life. His latest is a tragicomedy about a window screen executive trying to keep his family together.
Gargoyles by Bill Gaston (House of Anansi)
A dark horse Giller nominee in 2002 for Mount Appetite, the Victoria, B.C., writer thematically linked his latest collection of short stories with gargoyles — a representation of human emotion expressed in its extremes.
De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage (House of Anansi)
This Camus-infused debut novel by Hage — a Lebanese-born, Montreal-based visual artist turned writer — is set in 1980s Beirut at the height of Lebanon’s civil war. The book is also in the running for the Scotiabank Giller Award.
The Dodecahedron or A Frame for Frames by Paul Glennon (Porcupine’s Quill)
Like Christian Bok’s Eunoia, the Richmond, Ont., author’s latest short story collection is a work of Oulipo, a school of writing named after a 1960s avant-garde coterie of writers who wrote under a self-imposed set of constraints (think Dogme 95 for writers). This “novel” is written as 12 stories in 12 genres and with 12 narrators.
The Governor General’s Literary Awards will be announced Nov. 21 and honoured with a presentation by Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean on Dec. 13.
Rachel Giese writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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