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| Author | Book | Imprint |
| WINNER - Catherine O'Flynn | What Was Lost | Tindal Street |
| Rajiv Chandrasekaran | Imperial Life in the Emerald City | Bloomsbury |
| Stef Penney | The Tenderness of Wolves | Quercus |
| Paul Torday | Salmon Fishing in the Yemen | Weidenfeld & Nicolson |
| Markus Zusak | The Book Thief | Doubleday |
| Back to Shortlist index |
About the authors.... |
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Rajiv Chandrasekaran is an assistant managing editor of the
Washington Post, where he has worked since 1994. He previously
served as the newspaper's bureau chief in Baghdad, Cairo and South
East Asia, and as a correspondent covering the war in Afghanistan.
Imperial Life in the Emerald Citywon the Samuel Johnson Prize for
its revealing and faithful account of Paul Bremer's misadventures
leading the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, and failing to
win the peace. Chandrasekaran was the Washington Post's bureau chief in Baghdad at
the time, and in this book he offers far-reaching insights into this part of America's
recent history, making it a classic and hugely readable feat of reportage.
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What was a fairly slow
start in sales for this
new author was at first
compensated for by the
excellent reviews and
press coverage. Then it
was shortlisted for the Man Booker and
the Orange, and won the 2007 Costa
Prize for First Novel, at which point
everything changed - O'Flynn was
featured in several nationals due to the
enormous interest in a book that had been
turned down by all the major players.
What Was Lost is a moving and
intelligent novel about Britain today - a
land of shopping centres, fast food outlets
and consumerism. But it is also the story
of a young girl who goes missing. O'Flynn
combines humour, love, loss and grief in
this highly original story set in, and
behind, the corridors and the lives of staff
in a Midlands city shopping centre.
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Film-maker Stef
Penney's debut novel
won both the Costa
Prize for First Novel
and then the overall
Costa Book of the Year
last year, with Armando Iannucci,
Chairman of the Costa Judges, declaring it
“not just an extraordinary first novel but
an extraordinary novel”. Set in 1867 in the
snow-swept depths of Canada, The
Tenderness of Wolves follows characters
from a frontier township caught up in the
mysterious and brutal murder of a man
scalped in his bed. That night, a
seventeen-year-old boy runs away, leading
the finger of suspicion to point at him,
despite his mother's efforts to protect him.
The violence re-opens old wounds and
inflames deep-running tensions; some
want to solve the crime while others seek
to exploit it. The past histories of the
characters are as gripping as the plot itself.
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Paul Torday started to
write only in the last
three or four years, but
he's been a keen salmon
fisherman for the last
fifteen. Not interested
in salmon, fishing or the Yemen? You'll be
convinced otherwise by the time you reach
the end of this funny and - thanks to its
unusual presentation - original novel.
Reaching the Sunday Timesbestseller list
amid rave reviews, Salmon Fishing in the
Yemen is the story of Dr Alfred Jones, a
fisheries scientist who finds himself
reluctantly involved in a project that will
change his life, and the course of British
political history, forever. This is a gently
satirical novel about hypocrisy and
bureaucracy, dreams and deniability - and
the transforming power of faith and love.
Torday's second novel, The Irresistible
Inheritance of Wilberforce, has just been
published in Weidenfeld hardback.
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It's a brave move to make your literary debut with a novel narrated by Death. Include the setting of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust and a young protagonist whose parents are incarcerated in a concentration camp, and it's even braver for your publisher to market it as a crossover title for children and adults. But it's paid off - The Book Thief has made both this and the Children's shortlist. Australian author Markus Zusak grew up hearing stories about Jews being marched through his mother's small, German town. He said recently: “We have these images of the straight-marching lines of boys and the 'Heil Hitlers', ... but there still were rebellious children and people who didn't follow the rules ... who hid Jews and other people in their houses.” A number one New York Times bestseller. Black Swan, paperback, £7.99 
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