Authors for various Whitbread categories shortlisted

Authors for various Whitbread categories shortlisted

	Published : Fri, 18 Nov 2005 01:35 By : Cedric Benson Print this Story

Names of authors, who have been short listed in various categories of the 2005 Whitbread Book awards, were announced on Wednesday. These awards are a showcase for writing talent in British and other Commonwealth countries.

One of them, Ali Smith has also been nominated for Man’s Bookers prize for ‘The Accidental’. Salman Rushdie’s, exclusion of which from the Man Booker shortlist caused a stir, made it with ‘Shalimar the Clown’ along with novels from Christopher Wilson and Nick Hornby from over a 112 entries.

In the first novel category, Rachel Zadok, sprang a surprise with debut novel ‘Gem Squash Tokoloshe’. Zadok, 33, originally from South Africa moved to London four years ago and works as a waitress. She bagged a publishing contract after being spotted on the Richard and Judy show, where she reached the final five from over 46,000 entries.

She was excited after hearing about her. She said: “I just sat there, waiting for it all to sink in.” Her novel is set in apartheid times of South Africa and is about a mentally challenged woman. She said: "The book is really about belief and the influence society has on children.”

In the shortlists for biography, “Matisse: A Master” by Hilary Spurling, “a life of Lord Haw-Haw” by Nigel Farndale, “Stuart: A Life Backwards” by Alexander Masters and Richard Mabey's “Nature Cure” are included. Nature Cure is the author’s autobiographical narrative about sinking into clinical depression.

Winner in each of the categories is awarded £5000. One of them is also chosen as the Whitbread Book of the Year, which gives its author a £25,000 additional sum. This will be announced in January 2006.

Rushdie, a previous Whitbread winner, was nominated for his novel ``Shalimar the Clown,'' a sprawling epic that begins with the assassination of a former U.S. ambassador to India and touches on religious extremism, globalization and thwarted love as it flits between contemporary Los Angeles, Europe during World War II and embattled Kashmir.

Notable among other selection is author Hornby ’s “A Long Way Down”, which relates the tale of four strangers, all wanting to come suicide from atop a 15-story building on a New Year's Eve.
Whitbread, who owns Pizza Hut in the U.K. and the David Lloyd fitness centres instituted the awards in 1971.

Catherine Lockerbie, a former Whitbread judge now the Edinburgh International Book Festival's director said: “Each of the categories is so strong that one can only guess who will win the overall prize in January - which makes for a much more interesting prize.”