E de 13 restam 6 livros na corrida para vencer o The Man Booker Prize 2015, um dos prémios literários de maior prestígio o mundo, ficando pelo caminho “Lila” de Marilynne Robinson, talvez a autora mais consagrada do grupo.
Dos 6 livros que integram a shortlist, 2 pertencem a autores ingleses (Tom McCarthy e Sunjeev Sahota), outros 2 a autores americanos (Anne Tyler e Hanya Yanagihara), havendo ainda lugar para o jamaicano Marlon James e o nigeriano Chigozie Obioma.
O vencedor será conhecido no dia 13 de Outubro, mas para já deixo-vos com um cheirinho de cada um dos livros.
“A Brief History of Seven Killings” de Marlon James
“Satin Island” de Tom McCarthy
“The Year of the Runaways” de Sunjeev Sahota
“The Fishermen” de Chigozie Obioma
“Part of the novel’s impulse is that I have been looking for a way to capture what I feel is an elemental dilemma of the situation in Nigeria: Why is it that Nigeria can’t progress? We have abundant oil, a strong elite educated class, a sizable youth population of 70 million under 35 years old. Why are we still backwards as a people? The issue I think lies in the foundation itself. The distinct tribes, like Yoruba and Igbo, they are their own states. They used to have no contact and they progressed in their own way. But then a colonizing force came in and said, “Be a nation.” It is tantamount to the prophecy of a madman. Why are we subscribing to this British idea of a nation? Why can’t we decide for ourselves?”
Excerto de uma entrevista ao Michigan Quarterly Review.
“A Spool of Blue Thread” de Anne Tyler
“The Whitshank family – Red and Abby, now in their early old age, and their two sons, two daughters and numerous grandchildren – cleave to the myth of family precisely because they lack an elaborate foundation story. Their “patriarch”, Junior, is Red’s late father, a carpenter who dreamed and schemed his way to establishing the family’s rather grand and much-admired house, which becomes central to both their story and the novel’s. The shortness of their family tree means “they didn’t have that many stories to choose from. They had to make the most of what they can get”, and such characteristics as they have managed to build up are pretty self-effacing: they pride themselves on not being melodramatic, and their tendency to pretend things are going to turn out fine even leads them to deny their own mortality. “Whitshanks didn’t die, was the family’s general belief. Of course they never said this aloud. It would have seemed presumptuous.” (Not to mention the fact that some of them have died already.)”
Excerto da crítica do The Guardian.
“A Little Life” de Hanya Yanagihara
“The novel, which is both a dislocating meditation on the trauma of child sexual abuse, and a moving tribute to the possibilities and limitations of adult male friendship and love, was widely greeted as a book of landmark honesty – “the most ambitious chronicle of the social and emotional lives of gay men to have emerged for many years” – on publication in America in the spring (though some critics found its graphic descriptions of sexual violence both voyeuristic and too much to bear).”
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