In the Margin
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October 18, 2011

Julian Barnes Takes the Man Booker Prize

The fourth time is, apparently, the charm. With The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes wins the 2011 Man Booker Prize. The multifaceted writer has been shortlisted three times before, for three wildly different novels -- first in 1984 for his innovative Flaubert's Parrot; fourteen years later for  England, England; and then again for Arthur and George in 2005. In The Sense of an Ending, a man in late middle age finds that a secret from his childhood threatens to overturn the careful architecture of his comfortable life.

 

The other shortlisted titles were The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt, Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch, Half Blood Blues by Esi Edugya, Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman, and Snowdrops by A. D. Miller.

Daybook

May 18: Parade, the "first modern ballet," premiered in Paris on this day in 1917. The production was a collaboration of some of modernism's most famous -- music by Erik Satie, scenario by Jean Cocteau, costumes by Picasso,…

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Previously in Daybook
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The Long List
Books, CDs, DVDs to know about now
The Innocence Game

Three Chicago journalism students attend an “innocence” seminar that will teach them how to release the wrongfully accused from prison. But as innocents are jailed, a killer roams free, and the students are next on the hit list.

Little Green

Walter Mosley's suave detective Easy Rawlins is back among the living after a literal cliffhanger of a car crash, in pursuit of a  LSD-addled boxer roaming Los Angeles, 1967.

The Peripatetic Coffin

A Russian ship trapped in ice, the first Confederate submarine, and the world's worst summer camp are just three of the settings for Ethan Rutherford's tales of expeditions gone awry.  A Discover Great New Writers selection.