The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci (Doubleday Canada)

Nino Ricci's Governor General's Award-winning novel The Origin of Species and Fred Stenson's The Great Karoo are among nominees for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Short lists of best book and best first book from four regions —Africa, Canada and the Caribbean, Europe and South Asia, Southeast Asia and Pacific — were announced Wednesday by the Commonwealth Foundation.

Canadian writers took all six best first book nominations in Canada and the Caribbean, and only one non-Canadian, Grenada's Jacob Ross, earned a nomination for best book.

Ross's book Pynter Bender tells the story of the birth of a modern West Indian island and the shaping of its people.

Ricci's The Origin of Species, in which a student ponders Darwin's seminal work as he struggles to understand the world of human relationships, is set in the 1980s in Montreal.

Stenson, a Calgary-based writer of historical fiction, tells the story of Canadians fighting in the Boer War in The Great Karoo. It was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award.

Other Canadians nominated for best book:

• Marina Endicott of Edmonton, for Good to a Fault, about a woman who takes in a dysfunctional family after a car accident. It was nominated for a Giller Prize.
• Kenneth J. Harvey of Newfoundland and Labrador, for Blackstrap Hawco, a story that covers more than a century in a working-class family in the province.
• Jaspreet Singh of Montreal for Chef, a story that looks back on the conflict in Kashmir through the eyes of a man who clings to his culture's culinary history.

The nominees for best first book are:

• Theanna Bischoff of Calgary for Cleavage.
• Mark Blagrave of Sackville, N.B., for Silver Salts.
• Craig Boyko of Victoria for Blackouts.
• Nila Gupta of Toronto for The Sherpa and Other Fictions.
• Pasha Malla of Toronto for The Withdrawal Method.
• Joan Thomas of Winnipeg for Reading By Lightning.
• Padma Viswanathan of Edmonton for The Toss of a Lemon.

Among the nominees for best book from Europe and South Asia are Salman Rushdie for The Enchantress of Florence and Philip Hensher for The Northern Clemency.

Aravind Adiga of Australia has two nominations, best first book for his explosive debut, The White Tiger, and best book for Between the Assassinations.

Regional winners of best book and best first book will be announced on March 11 and then will compete for the overall best book and best first book award.

Last year's winner of the Commonwealth Prize was Canada's Lawrence Hill for The Book of Negroes, now a Canada Reads contender.