Ghanaian-Canadian author Esi Edugyan is the only author of African descent on the recently announced shortlist for the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award.
Edugyan is shortlisted for her latest novel Washington Black, which follows the life of George ‘Wash’ Washington, a young slave boy working on a sugar plantation in Barbados in the 19th century. The book was shortlisted from a longlist of 156 books!
The shortlist of ten was selected from a longlist of over 156 books, which saw a fair African representation. The eventual shortlist is notably star-studded with most of the titles already being celebrated in their own right having prior clinched or shortlisted for a major award. These include Milkman by Anna Burns which won the 2018 Booker Prize, The Silence of the Girls by Pat Baker which was shortlisted for the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Women’s Prize-winning An American Marriage by Tayari Jones. Also included is 2019 Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk for Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, translated from the polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.
Here is the full shortlist:
- The Silence of the Girls by Pat Baker
- Milkman by Anna Burns
- Disoriental by Négar Djavadi, translated from the French by Tina Kover
- Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
- An American Marriage by Tayari Jone
- History of Violence by Édouard Louis, translated from the French by Lorin Stein
- The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
- There There by Tommy Orange
- All the Lives We Never Lived by Anuradha Roy
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, translated from the polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
The winner would be announced on October 22, 2020.
Brittle Paper congratulates Esi Edugyan.
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