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A
Alvarez, Julia
Yo!
ISBN: 1565121570 (USA)
Nominated by: Lincoln City Library, Nebraska
Yolanda Garcia, the "Yo" of the title, is a best-selling novelist whose books are based on her family. The novel centres on what happens when her family and friends get the chance to tell the truth about Yo. Everyone, from her sisters to her fame-obsessed stalker, rips into her, telling how she has always had to be centre-stage; that she has been telling lies since the day she was born; how her college professor kept trying to keep her from ruining her talent; how she stole a plot for a story from one of her students; how she fills the house of her third husband with voodoo offerings. Described by Publishers Weekly as "A triumph of imaginative virtuosity", Yo! is Julia Alvarez's third novel: she lives in Vermont, USA.

Askew, Rilla
The Mercy Seat
ISBN: 0670874671 (UK & USA)
Nominated by: Oklahoma Department of Libraries; Houston Public Library, Texas
Described as "A piercing and starkly beautiful tale", The Mercy Seat tells the story of two brothers, John and Lafayette Lodi, who flee Kentucky and head into Indian Territory in the winter of 1887. They carry with them their families and a corrosive rivalry born of the inescapable bond of blood. Between the brothers, an ancient tragedy threatens to play itself out. Told first by Mattie, the ten-year-old daughter of John Lodi, and echoed in the voices of the white people who migrate into Indian lands, the novel follows Mattie as she fights to hold her disintegrating family together with a mix of loyalty, spite, and determined will. Rilla Askew lives in Oklahoma and New York, USA.

Atkinson, Kate
Human Croquet
ISBN: 0385405960 (UK & USA)
Nominated by: Gateshead Libraries and Arts, England; Liverpool Libraries & Information Services, England
Once the great forest of Lythe was a vast impenetrable thicket of green, with a mystery in the very heart of the trees. Here lived the Fairfaxes, at Fairfax Manor, once visited by the great Queen Elizabeth I herself. But over the long years the forest has been destroyed until all that is left is Boscombe Woods and the great Lady Oak. The Fairfaxes too have dwindled, now living in “Arden”, at the end of Hawthorn Close. The Fairfaxes are the family at the centre of Human Croquet; Vinny, the aunt from hell; Gordon, returned after seven years with fat Debbie, who shares her one brain cell with a poodle; Charles, the acne-scarred Lost Boy, and Isobel, to whom this story belongs. Human Croquet is an audacious  blend of history, comedy and tragedy, distilled through the lives of an eccentric urban family. Kate Atkinson's first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, was nominated for the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and won the Whitbread Prize.

B
Ball, Pamela
Lava
ISBN: 0393040240 (USA)
Nominated by: LeRoy Collins-Leon County Public Library, Florida
Memory and desire - and how the two can be mistaken for each other - are the themes of this magical novel set in Hilo on the Big Island of Hawaii. Kinau’s husband has been gone for five years, and with another woman. But then a bizarre incident brings Ivan back, and a new chain of passion and leave-taking spins itself out. Kinau’s life is shaped by the stories and energy of her mother (a woman of many husbands) and by the continuously hovering and jealous presence of the gods. Revenge for a boy’s accidental death calls for a bounty on sharks and results in a fishing frenzy. Tidal waves have struck and will strike again, and a volcano carries its own portentous message. Lava is Pamela Ball's first novel: she was born and raised in Oahu, Hawaii.

Banville, John
The Untouchable
ISBN: 0330339311 (UK); 0679451080 (USA)
Nominated by: Cape Town City Libraries, South Africa; Cleveland Public Library, Ohio; Dublin Corporation Public Libraries, Ireland; Minneapolis Public Library, Minnesota
In The Untouchable, Victor Maskell, double agent and Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, sits down to write his own testament following the public exposure of his life of espionage. Victor has been betrayed: after the announcement in the Commons, and the hasty revelation of his double (or quadruple) life of wartime spying, his photograph is in all the papers. His knighthood revoked and his post as curator of the Queen’s pictures terminated, Victor is left with a painful awareness of his age, and at the same time a strange feeling of rebirth, of being at the beginning of a new life. The Untouchable is an unforgettable and breathtakingly vivid picture of a life lived at the heart of this century. One of Ireland's greatest living novelists, John Banville's books have won many prizes and his novel Ghosts was shortlisted for the 1996 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Baricco, Alessandro
Silk
translated from the Italian by Guido Waldman
ISBN: 186046310X (UK); 1860462588 (USA)
Nominated by: Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona, Spain; Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Di Firenze, Italy; Multnomah County Library, Oregon
When an epidemic in the 1860s threatens to destroy the French silk trade, merchant Hervé Joncour travels to Japan to obtain eggs for a new breeding of silk worms. Japan is closed to foreigners and his journey must be clandestine. During his negotiations with the local baron, Joncour falls in love with the baron's concubine. Although the girl  and the young Frenchman are unable of exchanging even a word, love blossoms between them, communicated through a number of recondite messages in the course of the four visits paid by Joncour to Japan. Silk narrates how their secret relationship unfolds. Alessandro Barrico was born in Turin and Silk, his third novel, has been translated into 16 languages.

Bowering, Marilyn
Visible Worlds
ISBN: 0002243776 (Canada); 0002257246 (UK); 0060191481 (USA)
Nominated by: Vancouver Public Library, Canada
In the middle of a Winnipeg football game, a mysterious light descends from the sky to envelop the shattered body of an injured player. From that moment on, what we know about this visible world is forever changed as Marilyn Bowering spins a tale spanning two wars and moving from the streets of Winnipeg to the polar ice caps of Siberia, and into the napalm-burned forests of Korea. Gerhard and Albrecht are twin brothers, born into an eccentric family, their father drawn into the magic of “personal magnetism” and their German-immigrant mother obsessed with the past. Gerhard, sent back to Germany, becomes an elite Nazi soldier; Albrecht moves towards an equally uncertain future, shut out from the dark secrets of the family; and at the centre of it all is Nathaniel Bone, seemingly all-powerful and driven by his own terrible history. Marilyn Bowering has written one previous novel and several books of poetry: she lives in Sooke, Canada.

Brookner, Anita
Visitors
ISBN: 0224042882 (UK); 0679457852 (USA)
Nominated by: Mediatheque Francois-Mitterrand de Poitiers, France
Dorothea May’s peace is shattered by Kitty Levinson’s announcement of her granddaughter’s marriage. In her usual imperious style, Kitty expects Dorothea to put up the bridegroom’s friend, Steve Best, who turns out to be as feckless and self-centred as expected. As the wedding approaches, the truculent bride suddenly doubts the wisdom of her decision, and no one is sure whether the father of the bride will turn up at all. The scene is set for a highly charged conflict of generations in which the claims of the young are in stark contrast to the propriety of the old. Born in 1925, Anita Brookner is an art historian as well as a successful and respected novelist. She won the 1984 Booker Prize for Hotel du Lac and two of her later books have been nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Buechner, Frederick
On the Road with the Archangel
ISBN: 0060611251 (USA)
Nominated by: Minneapolis Public Library, Minnesota
Inspired by events in the apocryphal Book of Tobit, this is the magical tale of two families brought together by the devilishly clever archangel Raphael. One is the family of Tobit, a virtuous man who has gone blind, and can no longer support his wife and son. The other is the family of Raguel, quiet and devoted, whose daughter Sarah has made a pact with the demon Asmodeus, leaving her life a tragic shambles. Raphael appears to Tobit’s son, Tobias, and they set out on a journey in quest of the answers to both families’ prayers. On the Road with the Archangel is a combination of fluid writing. lyrical storytelling and ancient truth blended with modern wisdom. Frederick Buechner lives in Vermont, USA, and has written more than twenty-five works of fiction.

C
Cameron, Peter
Andorra
ISBN: 0374105057 (USA); 1857026330 (UK)
Nominated by: New York Public Library, New York
After a devastating personal tragedy, a man leaves the United States to begin a new life abroad. The country he finds himself in is inordinately influenced by his imagination, and the events there are eerily reminiscent of his past, especially when he begins to fall in love with two women simultaneously. Andorra is a small country, inhabited by such people as Mrs Reinhardt, living out her lifetime in the penthouse of the Hotel Excelsior; the Dents, an Australian couple who share a first name, a huge dog, and a secret; Sophonsobia Quay, the matriarch of the Quay family, and her two beautiful daughters; and Esmeralda St. Pitt, who runs a boarding house for those with impeccable moral standards. A sinisterly beautiful novel about deceit, desire, and the persistence of memory, Andorra is Peter Cameron's third novel: he lives in New York City.

Cao, Lan
Monkey Bridge
ISBN: 0670873675 (USA)
Nominated by: Pikes Peak Library, Colorado
For the first time in fiction, the un-mapped territory of the Vietnamese American immigrant experience is examined in this hauntingly beautiful tale of a young girl's coming-of-age in the United States in the aftermath of war. Mai Nguyen’s journey begins when she leaves Vietnam in February 1975, just before the withdrawal of US troops from Saigon. She enters the “Little Saigon” of Falls Church, Virginia, a community which encompasses refugees and veterans, reinvented lives and entrepreneurial schemes, and secrets and lies about the war-torn past. Finding some diaries hidden in her Mother’s dresser, Mai is drawn back to Vietnam, retracing her own earliest experiences and the histories of her mother and grandmother, and a story that began in the rice fields of the Mekong delta a generation before. Lan Cao lives in New York where she is a professor of international law at Brooklyn Law School.

Carey, Peter
Jack Maggs
ISBN: 0571193773 (UK); 070222952X (Australia); 0679440089 (USA)
Nominated by: Belfast Education and Library Board, Northern Ireland; Greater Johannesburg Public Library Service, South Africa; Jamaica Library Service; Liverpool Libraries & Information Services, England; State Library of New South Wales, Australia; State Library of Queensland, Australia
Peter Carey's Jack Maggs, set in London in 1837, is a thrilling story of mesmerism, of dangerous bargains and illicit love. Raised and deported as a criminal, Jack Maggs has returned from Australia in secret and at great risk. What does he want after all these years and why is he so interested in the activities at a plush townhouse in Great Queen Street? And why is Jack himself an object of such interest to Tobias Oates, amateur hypnotist, celebrated author, and fellow-burglar? Peter Carey was born in Australia in 1943 and lives in New York. He has written six novels, including Illywhacker, and Oscar and Lucinda,  winner of the 1985 Booker Prize.

Carrère, Emmanuel
Class Trip
translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
ISBN: 0704380595 (UK); 0805046941 (USA)
Nominated by: Bibliotheque Municipale de Lyon, France
Ten year old Nicholas is dreading the school trip. His father refuses to let him travel on the coach because of a recent road accident in which several children were killed. He arrives a day late and without his bag. Nicholas is beset with worries: will his father return with his bag? Will he wet the bed? Will his school mates tease him? Nicholas’ fears and fantasies become frighteningly real when a local child vanishes and staff and pupils are interviewed by the police. Along  with a school companion, Nicholas tries to solve the disappearance, only to confront a reality more sinister and atrocious than any of his imaginings. French author Emmanuel Carrère has written several previous books and won the Prix Femina for Class Trip.

Chevillard, Éric
The Crab Nebula
translated from the French by Jordan Stump and Eleanor Hardin
ISBN: 0803263708 (USA)
Nominated by: Bibliotheque Municipale de Lyon, France
The Crab Nebula is comprised of fifty-two vivid chapters that provide startling insights into the existence of this nebulous man named Crab: his nightmarish physique, his absence from the pages of history, his birth in prison, his never having been born at all. A post-modernist novel par excellence, The Crab Nebula parodies literary conventions and combines absurdity and hopelessness with irony and humour. This is the fifth novel from French author Éric Chevillard, and his first to be translated into English.

Clark, Robert
In the Deep Midwinter
ISBN: 0312181140 (USA)
Nominated by: Miami-Dade Public Library System, Florida
In the aftermath of his brother James's death, Richard MacEwan's life is suddenly rocked by secrets involving his wife Sarah and daughter Anna. Among his bachelor brother's papers, Richard discovers a letter from Sarah hinting at an infidelity. Then there is Anna’s affair with a married man which threatens to change her life forever. The story of Richard, Sarah, Anna and Charles is one of faith and doubt, profound moral and spiritual conflict, and the intricate bonds that hold families together. Robert Clark is the author of a biography of James Beard, The Solace of Food, and a cultural history of the Columbia River, River of the West. He lives in Seattle.

Cox, Elizabeth
Night Talk
ISBN: 1555972675 (USA)
Nominated by: San Antonio Public Library, Texas
At night, under the same roof, under the same moon, nothing divides Evie and Janey Louise. Talking in their beds the girls discuss their mothers, Agnes and Volusia; their absent fathers; and their brothers, one fighting polio, the other fighting in the U.S. Army. Their closeness blinds Evie to the divisions of daylight - that she is white and her best friend is black, that Janey’s mother is the housekeeper for Evie’s family. Night Talk charts the course of two unlikely friendships, between two daughters and their remarkable mothers. Partly set in the Civil Rights days of the fifties and sixties, the novel also confronts the challenges of the present day. Elizabeth Cox has written two previous novels: she teaches one semester a year at Duke University, North Carolina, and lives in Littleton, Massachusetts.

Crace, Jim SHORT-LISTED
Quarantine
ISBN: 014023974X (UK); 0374239622 (USA)
Nominated by: Birmingham City Libraries, England; Cleveland Public Library, Ohio; State Library of South Australia; Wellington City Council, New Zealand
Two thousand years ago four travellers enter the Judean desert to fast and pray for their lost souls. In the blistering heat they encounter the evil merchant Musa who holds them in his tyrannical power. Yet there is also another, a faint figure in the distance, fasting for forty days, a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles. Here, trapped in the wilderness, their battle for survival begins. Jim Crace is the award-winning author of five novels: Quarantine won the 1997 Whitbread Novel Award and was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize.

D
D'Aguiar, Fred
Feeding the Ghosts
ISBN: 0701166681 (UK)
Nominated by: Belfast Education and Library Board, Northern Ireland; Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark; University of Guyana Library, Guyana
Returning from Africa, the slave ship The Zong falls prey to disease. Its Captain orders his crew to throw the sick slaves overboard. But one slave survives drowning and climbs back on-board the ship, hiding in the food store. For the remainder of the voyage she tries to rouse the slaves to rebel against the killings, stirring up unease among the crew, a voice of conscience they are unable to stifle. On reaching London the Captain confidently lodges his insurance claim for his loses, but his claim is challenged and the voice of the slave who returned from the dead is heard again. Fred D'Aguiar was born in London and raised in Guyana. His previous novel Dear Future was nominated for the 1998 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and won the David Higham Prize.

Dallas, Sandra
The Diary of Mattie Spenser
ISBN: 0312187106 (USA)
Nominated by: Denver Public Library, Colorado
No one is more surprised than Mattie Spencer herself when Luke Spencer, considered the great catch in their small Iowa town, asks her to marry him. Less than a month later they set off in a covered wagon to build a home on the Colorado frontier. Mattie’s only company is a slightly mysterious husband and her private journal, where she records the joys and frustrations of frontier life and of marriage to a handsome but distant stranger. As she and Luke make their life together on the beautiful but harsh plains, Mattie learns some bitter truths about her husband and the girl he left behind, and finds love where she least expects it. Sandra Dallas is the author of  Buster Midnight’s Cafe and The Persian Pickle Club: she lives in Denver, Colorado.

Darrieussecq, Marie
Pig Tales: a novel of lust and transformation
translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
ISBN: 0571193722 (UK); 1565843614
Nominated by: Stadtbibliothek Mainz, Germany
Gender, politics and social hypocrisy all come under scrutiny in this entertaining and enlightening story of a stunning young woman who lands a prized position at a beauty "massage" parlour, She is very successful at bringing home the bacon until she slowly metamorphoses into a pig. Marie Darrieussecq was born in Bayonne, France and now teaches in Lille. This is her first novel.

Day, Marele
Lambs of God
 ISBN: 1862300178 (UK); 1864483229 (Australia); 1573220795 (USA)
Nominated by: Durban Metropolitan Library Services, South Africa; State Library of Tasmania
Lambs of God is the story of three nuns who live in a crumbling monastery on a remote island. They eat, sleep, worship, keep sheep, knit clothes, and tell stories. Like their knitting, their stories and their worship take on strange shapes. It has been a long time since anyone came along to remind them of the proper ways to do things, and their lives are tranquil and their existence timeless. Then, one day Father Ignatius arrives. Marele Day was born in Sydney and is one of Australia's top crime writers. Lambs of God announces her arrival in the world of literary fiction.

de Carvalho, Mário
A God strolling in the cool of the evening
translated from the Portuguese by Gregory Rabassa
ISBN: 0297819429 (UK); 0807122351 (USA)
Nominated by: Lincoln Library, Springfield Illinois; Biblioteca Municipal Central de Lisboa, Portugal
It has fallen to Lucius Valerius Quincius, supreme magistrate of the city of Tarcisis, to hold back the forces of chaos. In the twilight years of the Roman empire, with the forbidden sect of Christianity mushrooming within the city walls, and the Moorish hordes threatening without, this man must uphold the standard of moral courage in a disintegrating world. Mário de Carvalho has spent most of his life in Lisbon. He has published novels, story collections and drama. A God Strolling in the Cool of Evening won the Pegasus Prize for Literature in 1996.

DeLillo, Don SHORT-LISTED
Underworld
 ISBN: 0684842696 (USA); 0330354329 (UK)
Nominated by: Denver Public Library, Colorado; LeRoy Collins-Leon County Public Library, Florida; New York Public Library, New York; San José Public Library, California; Tucson-Pima Public Library, Arizona
Underworld begins with a legendary baseball game played in New York in 1951. The glorious result, and the winning 'Shot Heard Around the World', shades into the grim news that the Soviet Union has just tested an atomic bomb. The baseball itself generates the narrative that follows, taking the reader deeply into the lives of the two main protagonists, Nick and Klara, and into modern memory and the soul of American culture. Don DeLillo has written eleven novels and has won the National Book Award (USA) and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

E
Edric, Robert
In Desolate Heaven
ISBN: 071562783X (UK)
Nominated by: Birmingham City Libraries, England
Autumn 1919, in a Swiss spa town, Elisabeth Mortlake, companion to her widowed sister-in-law, meets Jameson and Hunter, ex-officers striving for some new measure of peace and order amid the ever-lengthening shadows of the First World War. Elisabeth is drawn increasingly into their lives, gradually understanding how fragile is the peace they each inhabit and how the bonds and ideals which once sustained them now threaten to destroy them completely. Robert Edric was born in 1956 and lives in East Yorkshire, England. He has written several previous and prize-winning novels.

Esterházy, Péter
She Loves Me
translated from the Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
ISBN: 0704380420 (UK); 963134408 (Hungary); 0810115573 (USA)
Nominated by: Metropolitan Szabo Ervin Library, Hungary
"There's this woman, she loves me. There's this woman, she hates me." Funny and irreverent, wise and sexy, Peter Esterházy's latest novel brilliantly countermands the anxiety of love and brings us face to face with the exhilarating hilarity of   our own confusion. Peter Esterházy was born in 1950 and is one of Hungary's most popular writers. He has written sixteen novels.

F
Fagerholm, Monika
Wonderful Women by the Sea
(published in the USA as Wonderful Women by the Water)
translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate
ISBN: 1860462626 (UK); 1565844882 (USA)
Nominated by: Helsingin Kaupunginkirjasto, Finland; Borgarbokasafn Reykjavikur, Iceland; Stockholm Public Library, Sweden
Wonderful Women by the Sea tells the story of two would-be starlets in an age of consumerism and glamorous one-night stands. Spending their days sunbathing and their evenings at cocktail parties they seem to embody the American "good life". But dark undercurrents threaten to undermine the sanctity of their domestic oasis by the sea and the women can't avoid the social and political upheaval that explodes across the world in the turbulent summer of 1968. Monika Fagerholm was born and lives in Helsinki, Finland. Wonderful Women by the Sea is her first novel.

Flanagan, Richard
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
ISBN: 0732908965 (Australia); 0330352911 (UK)
Nominated by: State Library of South Australia; State Library of Tasmania
In the winter of 1954, in a construction camp that festered like a bad wound in the remote Tasmanian wilderness, when Sonja Buloh was three years old and her father was drinking too much, her mother walked into a blizzard never to return. Some thirty-five years later, when Sonja visits Tasmania and her drunkard father, the shadows of the past begin to intrude ever more forcefully into the present. Richard Flanagan lives in Tasmania where he was born in 1961. The Sound of One Hand Clapping is his second novel.

Frazier, Charles
Cold Mountain
ISBN: 0340680598 (UK); 0871136791 (USA)
Nominated by: Chicago Public Library, Illinois; District of Columbia Public Library; Denver Public Library, Colorado; Gateshead Libraries and Arts, England; Miami-Dade Public Library System, Florida; Free Library of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Richland County Public Library, South Carolina
A soldier injured in the American Civil War, Inman turns his back on the carnage of the battlefield and begins the treacherous journey home to Cold Mountain, and to Ada, the woman he loved before the war began. Charles Frazier lives in North Carolina and has taught at universities there and in Colorado. He has written short stories and travel books: Cold Mountain is his first novel.

G
Gaarder, Jostein
Vita Brevis
translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born
ISBN: 1861590504 (UK)
Nominated by: Deichmanske Bibliothek, Norway
Is this apocryphal? Or is it a transcript of what it purports to be - a hitherto undreamt of letter to Saint Augustine, the fourth century bishop of Hippo, and author of the famous Confessions, from the woman he renounced for chastity? Highly educated, passionate and compassionate, Floria Aemilia, writer of the letter, leaps across the gulf of time still sparkling with life. Vita Brevis is both an entrancing human document and a fascinating insight into the life and philosophy of Saint Augustine.

García, Cristina
The Agüero Sisters
ISBN: 0679450904 (USA); 0330352016 (UK)
Nominated by: Lincoln Library, Springfield, Illinois
Cuban sisters Reina and Constancia Agüero have been estranged for thirty years. Reina, forty-eight years old and living in Cuba was once a devoted daughter of the revolution: Constancia, an eager to assimilate naturalised American, smuggled herself off the island in 1962. It is in the memories of their parents - dead many years but still powerfully present - that the sisters' lives have remained inextricably bound. Cristina García was born in Havana and grew up in New York City. An American National Book Award nominee, The Agüero Sisters is her second novel.

Gimosoulis, Kostis
Her Night on Red
translated from the Greek by Philip Ramp
ISBN: 9600411883 (Greece)
Nominated by: Veria Central Public Library, Greece
This is the complex story of a woman tearing herself away from a major love affair, driven by the pain of her decision to take a long journey. Arriving eventually on the island of Patmos, the battle to save her life reaches a climax and feeling she is on the verge of losing her soul, she rediscovers herself in the form of a sleeping child. She discovers the true grandeur of love and with it a sense of her own self. Kostis Gimosoulis lives in Athens, where he was born. Her Night on Red is his seventh book.

Golden, Arthur
Memoirs of a Geisha
ISBN: 0375400117 (USA); 0701166746 (UK)
Nominated by: Detroit Public Library, Michigan
Speaking to us with the wisdom of age and in a voice at once haunting and startlingly immediate, Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a geisha. In Memoirs of a Geisha we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl’s virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as an illusion. Arthur Golden was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two children.

Goldman, Francisco SHORT-LISTED
The Ordinary Seaman
ISBN: 080213548X (USA); 0571191010 (UK)
Nominated by: Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County, Ohio
The Ordinary Seaman is a lyrical and spellbinding story of hope, despair, and the promise of love. Esteban, a nineteen-year-old veteran of the war in Nicaragua, has come to America with fourteen other men to form the crew of the Urus. Docked on a desolate Brooklyn pier, the Urus is a wreck and the men its prisoners. Esteban, haunted by the loss of his first love in the war, escapes from the ship to start a new life in the city. Francisco Goldman was raised in Boston and Guatemala and divides his time between New York City and Mexico. The Ordinary Seaman is his second novel.

Grímsdóttir, Vigdís
Z - a Love Story
translated from the Icelandic by Anne Jeeves
ISBN: 1899197400 (UK)
Nominated by: Borgarbokasafn Reykjavikur, Iceland
Two sisters seek to understand themselves, each other, their lives and their relationships with their lovers - with Valgeir, semi-detached from his wife, and with Z, the journalist named for the flash of lightning that attended her birth. Set in Reykjavík in the winter of 1997, the novel has snow as a metaphor for love, for its beauty, its terror and its ability to overwhelm and suffocate. Vigdís Grímsdóttir lives in Reykjavík with her daughter. Z - a love story, which topped the best-seller lists in Iceland in 1996, is her fifth novel.

Grisham, John
The Partner
ISBN: 0385472951 (USA); 0712678417 (UK)
Nominated by: Suva City Library, Fiji
Patrick Lanigan was a young partner in a US law firm. He had a pretty wife, a young daughter and a bright future: then one winter night Patrick was trapped in a burning car. When he was buried his casket held nothing but his ashes. Six weeks later Patrick stole a fortune from his ex-law firm and started a new life as Danilo Silva - until they found him. The Partner is John Grisham's eighth  bestseller: he lives in Virginia, USA.

Grunberg, Arnon
Blue Mondays
translated from the Dutch by Arnold & Erica Pomerans
ISBN: 0436204584 (UK); 0374114854 (USA)
Nominated by: Stichting Openbare Bibliotheek Amsterdam,  The Netherlands; Dienst Openbare Bibliotheek Den Haag, The Netherlands; Gemeenschappelijke Openbare Bibliotheek Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Netherlands; NBLC, The Netherlands; Gemeentebibliotheek Rotterdam, The Netherlands ; Gemeentebliotheek Utrecht, The Netherlands
The protagonist of Blue Mondays, who happens to be called Arnon Grunberg, is a man on the run: expelled from school, uneasy with his family, he spends his days and nights living a vagabond’s life on the streets of Amsterdam. After a period spent scamming his way around the bars and restaurants of the city, Arnon eventually takes to visiting prostitutes, girls no older  or wiser then himself. Arnon Grunberg was born in Amsterdam in 1971: he wrote Blue Mondays, his first novel, on a dare, and it sold 70,000 copies in The Netherlands and is a European best-seller. Arnon Grunberg now lives in New York.

H
Halim, Tunku
Dark Demon Rising
ISBN: 9679786080 (Malaysia)
Nominated by: Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka, Malaysia
Shazral Abas’ father is dying. Shazral returns to the kampung to confront the dark memories of childhood and to face the terrible demon that has been waiting for him all these years. But first he must covet a strange inheritance, an inheritance that may destroy him and allow the demon to freely feast upon the human race. Tunku Halim was born in Malaysia and educated there and in England. Tunku Halim lives in Sydney, Australia, where he works as a solicitor, and  has published one collection of short stories: Dark Demon Rising is his first novel.

Heath, Roy
The Ministry of Hope
ISBN: 0714530158 (UK & USA)
Nominated by: University of Guyana Library, Guyana
Things are not going well for Kwaku, a small time chiseller and ineffective healer in a small Guyanan village: his wife has gone blind, his twin sons brutalise him, he is toppled from his perch as a healer, and becomes the laughing stock of the village. But Kwaku’s fortunes rise again as he makes his way to Georgetown to become a dealer in antique chamber pots. Armed with a recommendation and some cash from the mother of a government minister, he sets out in search of riches, only to end up the lowly servant of the corrupt minister who steals his ideas and uses him to further his financial scams and intrigues. Kwaku faces the dilemma of going under or adapting his character to suit his urban existence. The Ministry of Hope is the sequel to Roy Heath’s Kwaku. The author was born in Guyana and moved to England at the age of  24. He has published several previous works of fiction and is a winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize.

Hobbs, Jenny
The Telling of Angus Quain
ISBN: 1868420523 (South Africa)
Nominated by: Pretoria Community Library, South Africa
The Telling of Angus Quain is a sharply observed novel of contemporary Johannesburg, featuring Angus Quain’s rise from railwayman’s son to executive glory and his unusual friendship with Faith Doberman, a lonely writer/historian who begins to realise that he is not who he seems. As Angus is struck by cancer, Faith’s curiosity grows into a quest for truth which leads to a confrontation between the dying man and his rivals in fraud. Jenny Hobbs is an author, freelance journalist and occasional television presenter, living in Johannesburg. The Telling of Angus Quain is her fourth novel.

Høeg, Peter
The Woman and the Ape
translated from the Danish by Barbara Haveland
ISBN: 1860462545 (UK); 0140268448 (USA)
Nominated by: Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark
Adam Burden is approaching the culmination of his life’s ambitions: domestic bliss in the form of his devoted wife, Madelaine; professional success in the promised appointment to run a radically revamped London Zoo; and (illegal) possession of “a highly intelligent anthropoid ape”. But if Adam has plans, so do Madelaine and Erasmus, the ape. An elopement takes place and the search that follows is not merely for a missing woman and an anthropoid. Peter Høeg was born in 1957 and published his first novel in 1988. His best known book is Miss Smilla’s Feelings for Snow.

Hoffman, Alice
Here on Earth
ISBN: 0399143130 (USA); 0701166924 (UK)
Nominated by: LeRoy Collins Leon County Public Library,  Florida; Nevada State Library & Archives
After nearly twenty years living in California , March Murray, along with her fifteen-year-old daughter, returns to the small Massachusetts town where she grew up, to attend the funeral of the beloved housekeeper who raised her. Thrust into the world of her past, March slowly realises the complexity of the choices made by those around her, including Mrs Dale, who knew more of love than March could have suspected; Alan, the brother who is left with alcohol as his only comfort; and Hollis, the boy she loved, the man she can’t seem to stay away from. Alice Hoffman is the author of eleven other novels. She lives near Boston, USA.

Huneven, Michelle
Round Rock
ISBN: 0679454373 (USA); 1862070830 (UK)
Nominated by: San Antonio Public Library, Texas
In a small town among the citrus groves in the Santa Bernita Valley, so the locals claim, nothing ever goes according to plan. “It’s a great place to live, they say, if you like surprises: it’s just like life, only different”. Round Rock traces the emerging destinies of the inhabitants of the small town of Rito as each of them struggles for peace and equilibrium, even happiness and love, against hapless, all-too-human frailty and circumstance. Round Rock derives great power from psychological subtlety, and from affection for and understanding of lives strained or broken. Michelle Huneven was born in California where she makes her living as a freelance writer and restaurant critic.

J
Jacq, Christian
Ramses 1: The Son of Light
translated from the French by Mary Feeney
ISBN: 0446673560 (USA); 0684821362 (UK)
Nominated by: San José Public Library, California
At fourteen, Ramses, second son of the Pharaoh Seti, must begin to pass a series of royal tests designed to build his mental and physical prowess - or break him. Is Seti planning to leave the world’s most powerful empire to Ramses and not his corrupt brother Shaanar? Before he knows it the younger prince is surrounded by enemies and turning to his friends: Moses, the brilliant young Hebrew; Setau, the snake charmer and mage; and Iset and Nefertari, the two beautiful women Ramses loves. Christian Jacq was born in Paris in 1947. He and his wife founded the Ramses Institute, dedicated to creating a photographic description of Egypt’s archaeological sites. The Son of Light is the first in a five volume series.

K
Kadare, Ismail
The Three-arched Bridge
translated from the Albanian by John Hodgson
ISBN: 1559703687 (USA); 1860464637 (UK)
Nominated by: Hartford Public Library, Connecticut
The Balkan peninsula, history’s long disputed bridge between Asia and Europe, towards the close of the Middle Ages. The receding Byzantine empire has left behind a patchwork of warring principalities and onto this exposed limb of Europe the expanding Ottoman empire has cast its eye. In the Spring of 1378 the construction of a bridge over a strategically important river is slowed by sabotage. A mason suspected of the crime is found one morning immured up to his collarbones under the first of the bridge’s three stone arches, his head and shoulders peering out through the plaster. But his will not be the last sacrifice on the bridge that breaches Europe’s last line of defence against the threat of Islam. The Three-Arched Bridge is a parable of the Balkans’ past and a profoundly relevant comment on one of the most intractable conflicts of our time. Ismail Kadare’s writings have been translated into over 20 languages. This is his second novel.

Kinsella, John
Genre
ISBN: 1863681922 (Australia)
Nominated by: Library & Information Service of Western Australia
The Renaissance Man realises his wife, the novelist, is reading his private papers, Blue Velvet is playing in his head, their child moves around the room, the ‘girls’ next door are listening to some trance music, somewhere a couple is fighting. he strives to complete his article on the new exhibition at the institute of Contemporary Art. The junkie is dreaming of a White Christmas in the tropics, the retired surveillance man is recalling his childhood pet, the student is working on a draft of his sci-fi novel and dabbling in Descartes, and Bam Bam, denizen of the flat above, is pounding the hatred out like thunder over his head. John Kinsella was born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1963. He is the founding editor of the poetry magazine Salt.

Klíma, Ivan
The Ultimate Intimacy
translated from the Czech by A.G. Brain
ISBN: 1862070695 (UK); 0802116256 (USA)
Nominated by: Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, Kansas
Under the Communist regime Protestant Pastor Daniel Vedra was banished from Prague and lived under constant suspicion. Returning to Prague after the Velvet Revolution, he cares for his wife and children and his two congregations. In public a sought-after media commentator, in private he is a man wrestling with unspoken doubts. As he develops a relationship with a beautiful stranger, he rediscovers his long-buried need for intimacy and risks betraying his family, his vocation, and his future. Ivan Klíma was born in Prague in 1931 and was editor of the journal of the Czech Writers’ union during the Prague Spring. He has written many plays, stories, and novels and lives in Prague.

L
Lamott, Anne
Crooked Little Heart
ISBN: 0679435212 (USA)
Nominated by: Lincoln City Library, Nebraska
Rosie Ferguson, in the first bloom of young womanhood, is obsessed with tournament tennis. Her mother is a recovering alcoholic still grieving the death of her first husband, her father a struggling writer wrestling with his own demons. And now Rosie finds that her athletic gifts, once a source of triumph and escape, place her in danger, as a shadowy man who stalks her from the stands seems to be developing an obsession of his own. Crooked Little Heart is an exuberant portrait of a family for whom the joys and sorrows of everyday life are magnified under the glare of the unexpected. Anne Lamott is the author of four previous novels. She lives in Northern California with her son.

M
Macgoye, Marjorie Oludhe
Chira
ISBN: 9966469931 (Kenya)
Nominated by: Kenya National Library Service
When one woman dies of symptoms of a wasting disease and another confesses that she is HIV positive, the question is asked: will they be long survived by their male partners? Against the backdrop of an AIDS scourge, some men and women try to lead normal lives, but fall short of escaping the tragedies brought about by the new killer. Chira is a tale of surprises and mysteries unsolved: a tale in which science and tradition converge to examine new tragedies in life. Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye was born in Southampton, England, in 1928 and moved to Kenya in 1954. She has published several novels and a collection of poetry will be published shortly.

MacLaverty, Bernard
Grace Notes
ISBN: 022404429X (UK); 0393045420 (USA)
Nominated by: Belfast Education and Library Board, Northern Ireland; Cape Town City Libraries, South Africa; Manchester City Libraries, England; Mediatheque Francois-Mitterrand de Poitiers, France; Wellington City Council, New Zealand
Grace Notes brings us into the life of Catherine McKenna, estranged daughter, vexed lover, new mother, and woman composer making her mark in a male-dominated profession. On the remote island of Islay she struggles for her artistic life in the midst of a relationship gone dangerously wrong. In Glasgow she gives birth to a child and receives a career-making commission from the BBC. And in her home town in Northern Ireland she returns to bury her father, forge a tentative relationship with her mother and confront the ghosts of  her past. Bernard MacLaverty is a native of Northern Ireland and lives in Glasgow. He previous novels are Lamb, and Cal: Grace Notes was shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize.

MacLean, Rory
The Oatmeal Ark
ISBN: 000637977X (UK)
Nominated by: Stadt-und Universitatsbibliothek Bern, Switzerland
The reverend Hector Gillean is a ghost. At the start of the last century he built a ship and sailed west from the Hebrides to Canada. Two hundred years later his great-grandson retraces the hopeful voyage from Scotland to Nova Scotia, across Canada by water and through three generations of extraordinary family history. The Oatmeal Ark is at once a record of a remarkable pilgrimage, a fantastical narrative and a glimpse at the universal quest for a better world. The Oatmeal Ark is award winning author Rory MacLean’s second novel.

Mailer, Norman
The Gospel according to the Son
ISBN: 0679457836 (USA); 0316641685 (UK)
Nominated by: London Borough Libraries,  England; Biblioteka Publiczna M. St. Warszawy, Poland
For two thousand years, the brief ministry of a young Nazarene preacher has remained the largest single determinant of Western Civilisation’s triumphs and disasters. The Gospel According to the Son, while sticking closely to the New Testament, succeeds in vividly re-creating the world of Galilee and Jerusalem two thousand years ago. The book creates for us a man wholly unlike others who is nonetheless filled with passion and doubt, strength and weakness; a protagonist divine and human, a son of God who shares our condition. Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Norman Mailer was born in 1923 and has written thirty books.

Majid, Ellina binti Abdul
Perhaps in Paradise
ISBN: 9839925202 (Malaysia)
Nominated by: Dewan Bahasa Dan Pustaka, Malaysia
It is 1969 and Kina is about to celebrate her birthday. The youngest of three girls, she is conscious of the fact that she is neither as pretty nor as clever as her two sisters. Yet her powers of perception and description display a maturity and sensitivity beyond her tender years. Set against the tragedy of 1969, the novel presents an insight into growing up in the seventies when family pride and keeping up appearances were everything in Malaysian society. Ellina binti Abdul Majid began her career as a journalist but has since worked in a variety of jobs: she lives in Kuala Lumpur.

Makine, Andreï
Le Testament Français
translated from the French by Geoffrey Strachan
ISBN: 034068206x ((UK); 1559703830 (USA)
Nominated by: District of Columbia Public Library; Stadtbuchereien Hannover, Germany; Lincoln Library, Springfield, Illinois; Minneapolis Public Library, Minnesota
Each summer, a young boy, the narrator, and his sister leave the Soviet Union and go to a mysterious Atlantis-like country, created from newspaper cuttings, old photographs, and the memories and stories of their maternal grandmother. Charlotte, the grandmother, is of French origin, and her imagination and storyteller’s gifts help her survive the difficult times of Stalinist era Russia. As he gets older, the narrator begins to piece together his grandmother's story, including her experiences in the Great War, and the October Revolution. Andreï Makine was born in Siberia in 1957 and has lived in Paris since 1987. Le Testament Français, published in the USA as Dreams of my Russian Summers, was the first book to win both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis,  and is the author’s fourth novel. Translator Geoffrey Strachan was awarded the 1998 Times Literary Supplement-Scott Moncrieff Prize for his translation of Le Testament Français.

Maraini, Dacia
Voices
translated from the Italian by Dick Kitto and Elspeth Spottiswood
ISBN: 185242527X (UK & USA)
Nominated by: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Di Firenze, Italy
Michela Canova, a radio journalist, returns home to find that her neighbour, Angela Bari, has been murdered. Coincidentally, she is asked to prepare a series on crimes against women. Researching the programmes, Michela is forced to confront the every day horror and violence of big city life. Voices asks fundamental questions about the human condition. How much can individuals escape the patterns of domination, of male domination, that are in place the world over? Dacia Maraini is one of Italy’s most controversial authors. Several of her books have been translated into English.

Masini, Donna
About Yvonne
ISBN: 0393040917 (USA)
Nominated by: Tucson-Pima Public Library, Arizona
"I’ve been stalking my husband’s lover.” So begins the irrepressible Terry Spera in this unsettling story about the nature of obsession. We watch as Terry begins to follow Yvonne through the streets of Manhattan, to her apartment on the Upper West Side, and as she begins to make even more alarming inroads into Yvonne’s life. As she tries to maintain  a semblance of normal life with her husband Mark, we, like Terry, veer from certainty to uncertainty. Is Mark having an affair?  Donna Masini’s first book of poetry That Kind of Danger, won the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. The recipient of a national Endowment for the Arts grant, she is currently teaching at Columbia University and lives in New York City.

Mastretta, Ángeles
Lovesick
translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
ISBN: 1573220620 (USA); 022405032X (UK)
Nominated by: Biblioteca Daniel Cosio Villegas of El Colegio de Mexico
Set in turn of the century Mexico, Lovesick is the story of Emilia Sauri, born into a privileged, freethinking class, the product of a family of progressive eccentrics. Emilia is torn between her childhood playmate, the rebel fighter Daniel, and Antonio, her physician colleague. He desires peace, Daniel cannot resist the thrill of conflict. As Emilia sorts through the affairs of her heart, shedding the bonds and prejudices of previous generations, she must also confront the fate history presents - a nation wracked by years of war, a society facing the tumult of the twentieth century.
Ángeles Mastretta was born in Puebla, Mexico and has published one previous novel. She lives in Mexico City.

Mayle, Peter
Chasing Cézanne
ISBN: 0679455116 (USA); 0241137659 (UK)
Nominated by: Richmond Public Library, Virginia
Photographer Andre Kelly is sent to the South of France by editor Camilla Jameson Porter to take glamorous photographs of the houses and treasures of the rich and famous. He happens to have his camera ready when he notices a Cézanne being loaded into a plumber’s truck near the home of an absent collector. In no time he’s on the trail of a state-of-the-art art scam, chasing Cézanne. During the chase Andre meets up with a beautiful agent, a super-savvy art dealer with expensive tastes, a master Dutch forger, several greedy New York socialites, and in the background, a parade of remarkable chefs whose culinary masterpieces soothe the hero and tantalise the reader. Peter Mayle is the author of several books, including the best-seller A Year in Provence. He divides his time between France and Long Island.

McEwan, Ian SHORT-LISTED
Enduring Love
ISBN: 0224050311 (UK); 0385491123 (USA)
Nominated by: Cape Town City Libraries, South Africa; Greater Johannesburg Public Library Service, South Africa
Joe Rose’s calm, organised life is shattered by a ballooning accident one windy spring day in the Chilterns. The afternoon could have ended in mere tragedy but for his brief encounter with Jed Parry. Unknown to Joe, something passes between them and gives birth in Parry to an obsession so powerful that it will test Joe’s beloved scientific rationalism to the limit, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to desperate measures to stay alive. Enduring Love is the story of how an ordinary man can be driven to the brink of murder and madness by another’s delusions. Ian McEwan has written two collections of stories and eight novels, including Black Dogs, The Daydreamer, and, most recently, Amsterdam, which won the 1998 Booker Prize.

McFarland, Dennis
A Face at the Window
ISBN: 0553066943 (USA)
Nominated by: Detroit Public Library, Michigan
After sending their only daughter off to boarding school, Cookson and Ellen Selway travel to London to escape their empty house. But their quiet hotel has other guests and Cookson, an escapist with an alcoholic history, is drawn into a series of encounters with the ghost of a young girl who died in a fall from the hotel sixty years earlier. As the shadowy rooms and characters of her life, and the nightmarish circumstances of her death, grow more real, Ellen looks on helplessly as her husband withdraws into a darkness whose inhabitants she cannot see or touch. With their marriage crumbling and the lives of those around them in danger, Selway dimly realises that he must relinquish the spirits to return to real life. But the consequences of his escape are far greater than he could ever imagine. Dennis McFarland is the author of two previous novels, one of which was The Music Room, a New York Times bestseller. He lives near Boston.

Melville, Pauline
The Ventriloquist's Tale
ISBN: 0747531501 (UK); 1582340099 (USA)
Nominated by: Stadt-und Universitatsbibliothek Bern, Switzerland; University of Guyana Library, Guyana
‘The whole purpose of magic is the fulfilment and intensification of desire’, claims the ventriloquist-narrator as he weaves together his stories of love and catastrophe. With relish and skill, The Ventriloquist’s Tale conjures vivid pictures of savannah, forest and city life in South American where love is often trumped by disaster. The characters we meet are unforgettable: Sonny, the strange, beautiful son of Beatrice and Danny, the brother and sister who have a passionate affair at the time of the solar eclipse of 1919; Father Napier, the sandy-haired evangelist whom the Indians perceive as a giant grasshopper; Chofy McKinnon, the modern Indian, torn between savannah life and urban future. Pauline Melville’s first book, a collection of short stories entitled Shape-shifter, won the Guardian Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize for first book. The Ventriloquist’s Tale is her first novel.

Miller, Andrew SHORT-LISTED
Ingenious Pain
ISBN: 0340682086 (UK); 0151002584 (USA)
Nominated by: Deichmanske Bibliothek, Norway; State Library of South Australia; Bibliotheque Municipale de Tours, France
Ingenious Pain tells of the rise, fall and redemption of an extraordinary man, whose lack of compassion is physical: he is unable to feel pain. Born in the West Country, in the mid-eighteenth century, at the dawn of the Enlightenment, James Dyer grows up to become a brilliant surgeon. The novels takes us from England, through Europe, across to Russia, as Dyer travels to St. Petersburg: en route, he meets a witch-like woman, who proves both his nemesis and saviour. At one level an exciting adventure story, Ingenious Pain is also a novel of ideas, packed with detail, with a wonderful sense of period. Andrew Miller was born in Bristol, England, in 1960. He currently lives in Dublin, where he is working on his second novel.

Moody, Rick
Purple America
ISBN: 0316579254 (USA); 0002256878 (UK)
Nominated by: Houston Public Library, Texas
Purple America brings us a family in extremis: a son is summoned home to care for his mother, who has long been sick, after she is abandoned by her husband. Over the course of a single weekend night, the son, Hex Raitliffe, sees his good intentions destroyed by a number of opposing forces - not least his own fondness of strong drink. He confronts his stepfather, disturbs the embers of an  old attraction, and tries to accommodate his mother’s demands. What begins as a mission of mercy leads to confusion, debauchery, old wounds reopened and stinging revelations that only a visit home can bring. Rick Moody has written two previous novels and a collection of short stories. The winner of the Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award and the Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize, he lives in Brooklyn,  New York.

Moore, Brian
The Magician's Wife
ISBN: 0747537186 (UK); 0525944001 (USA)
Nominated by: Greater Johannesburg Public Library Service, South Africa; Manchester City Libraries, England
Set in the late 1850s in France and Algeria, The Magician’s Wife blends political intrigue, moral enquiry and the unforgettable portrait of a lady. Emmeline Lambert is married to an illusionist sent by Napoleon III to persuade the Arabs - poised for Holy War and in thrall to charismatic leaders - that France’s might and magic are greater. Emmeline begins to feel like an illusionist herself, when she dazzles the Emperor and then sheds her inhibitions along with flimsy notions of patriotism and propriety under the hot glare of the Algerian sun. Brian Moore was born in Belfast and emigrated to Canada in 1948. The winner of many literary prizes, five of his novels have been filmed. He lives and works in California.

Murakami, Haruki SHORT-LISTED
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle
translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin
ISBN: 0679446699 (USA); 186046470X (UK)
Nominated by: Hartford Public Library, Connecticut
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is many things: the story of a marriage that mysteriously collapses; a jeremiad against the superficiality of contemporary politics; an investigation of painfully suppressed memories of war; a bildungsroman about a compassionate young man’s search for his own identity as well as that of his nation. Deceptively simple, wise, poignant, funny, and horrifying, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is a mesmerising saga of personal conscience and the power of history. Haruki Murakami was born in Japan in 1949. He is the recipient of many honours including the prestigious Yomiuri Literary Prize and his work has been translated into fourteen languages.

N
Newland, Courttia
The Scholar
ISBN: 0349108765 (UK)
Nominated by: Leeds Library and Information Services, England
Cory and Sean Bradley are cousins, but grow up as brothers on Greenside Estate in West London. Young, black, good looking and smart enough to want to leave the poverty trap of the estate, their escape routes are as different as their personalities.  Sean, ‘the scholar’, sensible, serious and anti-drugs, studies hard to get a university place. Cory, street-wise and impulsive, has discovered the more instant rewards of crime and the pleasures of weed, E and whizz. Each cousin seems to have made his choice; but  plans go awry. As violence escalates and options lessen, Sean and Cory face the task of trying to do the right thing in the wrong place. Courttia Newland lives in West London where he is working on his second novel.

Nightingale, Steven
The Thirteenth Daughter of the Moon
ISBN: 0312169116 (USA)
Nominated by: Nevada State Library & Archives
Following on from his previous novel The Lost Coast, Steven Nightingale continues the story of Cookie the cowgirl and her compatriots on their journey to the Pacific. The travellers, - Cookie; Chiara, a hot-blooded professor, and her nubile daughter Izzy; Izzy’s Jamaican lover Muscovado; Ananda, a blonde attorney with her own surprising love-bond; and the painter and father-to-be, Renato - head together for San Francisco Bay, hoping to reach the Lost Coast itself. All along the way, the stories they need seek them out: the story of the two hitchhikers who turn out to be an ancient poet and a medieval saint; the story of the coyote who is marking out the progress of the soul. Steven Nightingale is often seen in the San Francisco Bay area, although his address is in Reno, Nevada. This is his second novel.

Njoroge, Mwaura
Just One More Chance
ISBN: 9966994602 (Kenya)
Nominated by: Kenya National Library Service
Just One More Chance tells the story of Kagiywo, how he met and married Mwara, how she took over leadership in the home, and how Kagiywo entered into robbery and violence so that he could not be divorced by his wife. Kagiywo needed "just one more chance", but was he given it? Mwaura Njoroge is Managing Editor of Today in Africa magazine. A preacher in churches and open air meetings in Kenya he has written two previous novels.

O
Oz, Amos
Panther in the Basement
translated from the Hebrew by Nicholas de Lange
ISBN: 0099754010 (UK); 0151002878 (USA)
Nominated by: Dublin Corporation Public Libraries, Ireland
Jerusalem 1947: British soldiers patrol the streets, and bullets and bombs are a nightly occurrence. Caught up in the fervour and unrest against the occupying forces, 12-year-old Proffy dreams of being an underground fighter. But some of his dreams are less heroic: temptation lies everywhere for the youth who wants to be a man - and betrayal is not far behind. Born in Jerusalem in 1939, Amos Oz is one of Israel’s finest living writers and well known as a political commentator and campaigner for peace in the Middle East. The winner of many international literary awards, he is the author of eleven previous books of fiction, including Don't Call it Night, which was nominated for the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Amos Oz is married with three children and lives in Arad, Israel.

Ozick, Cynthia SHORT-LISTED
The Puttermesser Papers
ISBN: 0679454764 (USA)
Nominated by: San José Public Library, California
Ruth Puttermesser, yearning for a life of the mind (her idol is George Eliot), finds herself mired in the lowest circles of city bureaucracy. Her love life is hopeless. Her fantasies are more influential than reality - she takes Hebrew lessons from an uncle who died before she was born; she makes a golem out of the earth of her houseplants. Still, she turns out to be the best mayor New York City ever elected. Soon enough, though, paradise gained becomes paradise lost, and the impact of getting exactly what you want and then losing it plays itself out in dramatic and surprising fashion. Cynthia Ozick has won many awards and prizes for her writing, including the American Academy of Arts. She lives near New York City.

P
Pamuk, Orhan
The New Life
translated from the Turkish by Güneli Gün
ISBN: 0571193781 (UK); 0374221294 (USA)
Nominated by: Helsingin Kaupunginkirjasto, Finland; Multnomah County Library, Oregon; Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, Kansas
Osman, a young university student, becomes obsessed with a magical book that delves into the dangerous nature of love and self. He turns his back on home and family, abandons his studies, and falls in love. With the beautiful Janan, he goes on a search for the meaning of the book’s darker secrets. Their odyssey takes them on restless bus trips through the arid heartland of Turkey, into lost provincial towns where danger lurks on every street and where love is no longer any guarantee of refuge. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul where he lives with his family. His books have been translated into fifteen languages and The New Life is the fastest selling book in Turkish history.

Park, Jacqueline
The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossi
ISBN: 0684848406 (USA)
Nominated by: Free Library of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Secret Book of Grazia Dei Rossi is a sweeping tale of intrigue and romance set in a time rife with court politics, papal chicanery, religious intolerance and inviolable social rules. Grazia, private secretary to the world-renowned Isabella d’Este, is the daughter of an eminent Jewish banker, the wife of the pope’s Jewish doctor, and the lover of a Christian prince. In her “secret book”, written for her son, she records her struggles to choose between the seductions of the Christian world and a return to the family, traditions, and duties of her Jewish roots. Canadian Jacqueline Park is the founding chairman of the Dramatic Writing Program and professor emerita at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She lives in New York, Toronto, and Miami Beach.

Pears, Iain
An Instance of the Fingerpost
ISBN: 0224044664 (UK); 1573220825 (USA)
Nominated by: Bibliotheque Municipale de Tours, France
Oxford in the 1660s is a place of intellectual, scientific, religious and political ferment. When Robert Grove, a fellow of New College, is found dead in suspicious circumstances, a young woman is accused of his murder. In An Instance of the Fingerpost we hear accounts of the events surrounding the death from four witnesses, Marco da Cola, a Venetian Catholic determined to claim the credit for the invention of blood transfusion; Jack Prescott, son of an alleged Royalist traitor, intent on clearing his father’s name; John Wallis, chief cryptographer to both Cromwell and Charles II, mathematician, theologian and inveterate plotter; and Anthony Wood, the famous Oxford antiquary. Each witness tells their story: which of them is telling the truth? Iain Pears was born in 1955 and has worked as a journalist and historian. He is the author of six detective novels, and lives in Oxford.

Pears, Tim
In a Land of Plenty
ISBN: 0385408463 (UK & USA)
Nominated by: Stadtbucherei Frankfurt, Germany
In a small town in England, in the aftermath of the Second World War, industrialist Charles Freeman buys the big house on the hill for himself and his wife Mary. In quick succession, three sons and a daughter bring life to the house and with it the seeds of joy and tragedy. As the children grow up, Charles’s business expands in direct proportion to his girth and becomes synonymous with the town’s prosperity as Britain claws its way back from the years of grey austerity. As times changes, so do their fortunes, for better and for worse, ebbing and flowing with the years. Tim Pears was born in 1956 and has worked in a variety of jobs. His first novel, In the Place of Fallen Leaves, won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. He lives in Oxford.

Pynchon, Thomas
Mason & Dixon
ISBN: 022405001X (UK); 0805037586 (USA)
Nominated by: Liverpool Libraries & Information Services, England
British Surveyors Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon are best remembered for drawing the boundary between Pennsylvania and Maryland, known as the Mason-Dixon line. Thomas Pynchon re-imagines their story in this updated 18th-century novel featuring Native Americans and frontier folk, ripped bodices, naval warfare, erotic and political conspiracies, and major caffeine abuse. Mason & Dixon takes us on a grand tour of the Enlightenment’s dark hemisphere, from their first journey to the Cape of Good Hope, to pre-revolutionary America, and back to their shadowy but redemptive lives back in England. Along the way they meet a cast of characters, including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington and Samuel Johnson, as well as a Chinese feng shui master, a Swedish irredentist, a talking dog, and a robot duck. Widely regarded as one of America’s greatest novelists, Thomas Pynchon is the author of several books, including V, Gravity’s Rainbow, and Vineland.

R
Ransmayr, Christoph
The Dog King
translated from the German by John E. Woods
ISBN: 0679450572 (USA); 0701166274 (UK)
Nominated by: Stadtbuchereien Hannover, Germany; Stadtbibliothek Mainz, Germany; Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, Kansas
World War II has ended, but only in the West. Central Europe is slipping back into its past. The Allies have punished Germany for its war crimes by forcing it to revert to a pre-industrial age: power stations, railways, factories, and all the machinery of technology have been destroyed or abandoned. The occupying American army has installed Ambras, a camp survivor, as governor of Moor, the town in which he worked as a slave labourer. Brave and lonely, Ambras chooses another loner, Bering, a village boy, and mechancial genius, to be his bodyguard. Bering enters a new world of power, of half-glimpsed ideas, of contact with the forbidden world outside. He meets Lily, who lives and hunts in the hills, the only other person welcomed by Ambras. When Bering’s new life begins to unravel as he falls prey to a strange eye disease, only Lily can find help and offer them all a possible future. Born in Austria in 1954, Christoph Ransmayr is the author of two previous novels. For The Dog King, he shared in 1996 with Salman Rushdie the European Aristeion Prize. He lives and works in a village near Dublin, Ireland.

Richler, Mordecai
Barney's Version
ISBN: 0676970788 (Canada); 0701162724 (UK); 067940418X (USA)
Nominated by: Ottawa Public Library, Canada
Barney Panofsky has always clung to two cherished beliefs: life is absurd, and nobody ever truly understands anybody else. Even his friends tend to agree that Barney is a wife-abuser, an intellectual fraud, a purveyor of pap, a drunk with a penchant for violence, and probably a murderer. But when his sworn enemy threatens to publish this calumny, Barney is driven to write his own memoirs, rewinding the spool of his life, editing, selecting and plagiarising as his memory plays tricks on him - and on the reader. Barney slides from crisis to success, from low- to high-life in Montreal, London and Paris, his outrageous exploits culminating in the scandal he carries around like a humpback: did he or didn’t he murder his best friend Boogie? Mordecai Richler was born in Montreal in 1931. He is the author of nine novels and was twice short listed for the Booker Prize.

Rose, Joanna
Little Miss Strange
ISBN: 1565121546 (USA)
Nominated by: Multnomah County Library, Oregon
Sarajean Henry is a child of love children. She’s perfectly at home in a place where there are no real “homes”, no last names, and no commitments to the future: the free-love, hippie world of Denver in the 1970s. The story begins when Sarajean is an infant, living with Vietnam veteran Jimmy Henry who she accepts as her father. Whoever her mother may have been, she disappeared long ago. Sarajean successfully scams and scavenges her way through childhood, overcoming obstacles such as Jimmy Henry’s heroin habit and having Miss Rinaldi, the Queen Bitch of Homework, for third grade. By the age of five she’s finding her own way to school; by ten she’s smoking pot. By the time she comes of age she’s seen enough sex and violence to last a lifetime. And from it all, Sarajean puts together the identity she craves, displaying all the resilience of the human spirit. Jonna Rose lives in Portland, Oregon where she works at a book shop.

Roth, Philip
American Pastoral
ISBN: 0099771810 (UK); 0395860210 (USA)
Nominated by: Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County, Ohio; Flemish Central Public Libraries,  Belgium; Hartford Public Library, Connecticut
Seymour “Swede” Levov, a legendary high school athlete, a devoted family man, the prosperous inheritor of his father’s Newark glove factory, comes of age in thriving triumphant post-war America. But the Swede is not allowed to remain blissful inside the beloved hundred-and-seventy-year-old stone farmhouse where he lives with his pretty wife, the college sweetheart and former Miss New Jersey, and his lively, precocious daughter who is the apple of his eye. Everything he loves is lost when the country begins to run amok in the turbulent 1960s, and his daughter grows up to be a revolutionary terrorist bent on destroying her father’s paradise. Philip Roth was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1933, and now lives in Connecticut. He has written twenty-two books, and with his last three, written in the 1990s, he has won the three major American literary awards (National Book Critics Circle, PEN/Faulkner, and the National Book Award).

Rouaud, Jean
Of Illustrious Men: a novel
translated from the French by Barbara Wright
ISBN: 1559702656 (USA); 1860460070 (UK)
Nominated by: Stadt-und Universitatsbibliothek Bern, Switzerland
Of Illustrious Men is about the author’s father, Joseph, a travelling salesman who died at forty-one, leaving a family in shock behind him. In the mind of his grieving eleven-year-old son, too young to have really known him, his dead father’s exploits in the Resistance were the stuff of daydreams. His father was more than a quiet family man; he was a hero, a warrior, a legend. But the narrator is no longer a child, but a mature writer, and though he still aches for the loss of his father, he also knows that Joseph’s heroism can be found not only in the days of wartime glory, but also in the days of domestic peace. Jean Rouaud won the prestigious Goncourt Prize for his first novel, Fields of Glory. He lives in Montpellier with his family.

Roy, Arundhati
The God of Small Things
ISBN: 0006550681 (UK); 0679457313 (USA)
Nominated by: Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona, Spain; Chicago Public Library, Illinois; Copenhagen Central Library, Denmark; Flemish Central Public Libraries, Belgium; Stadtbucherei Frankfurt, Germany; Leipziger Stadtische Bibliotheken, Germany; Lincoln City Library, Nebraska; London Borough Libraries, England; Bibliotecas Publicas Municipales de Madrid, Spain; Mariehamns Stadsbibliotek, Finland; Richmond Public Library, Virginia; State Library of Tasmania; Tucson-Pima Public Library, Arizona
Ostensibly the tale of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, The God of Small Things begins with a funeral and ends with a meeting between two lovers. The funeral is the culmination of events that started with a love affair and the novel tells us how the characters got there, and the terrible damage they suffer along the way. Children of a divorced and embittered young mother, the twins wend their way through the minefield of family relationships: their mother's wild moods, their uncle Chacko's affection, their great-aunt Baby's destructive jealousy, and Velutha, a young untouchable carpenter and member of the Communist party who becomes their friend and, crucially, their mother's lover. Familiar, yet  also exotic, to the Western reader, The God of Small Things is invigorated by the Asian-Indian influences of culture and language. Arundhati Roy lives in New Delhi. She was trained as an architect and has written two screenplays: The God of Small Things is her first novel and won the 1997 Booker Prize.

Russo, Richard
Straight Man
ISBN: 0679432469 (USA); 070116199X (UK)
Nominated by: Public Library of Cincinnati & Hamilton County, Ohio; Miami-Dade Public Library System, Florida
William Henry Devereaux, Jr. is the unlikely chairman of the English department at West Central Pennsylvania University. Over the course of a single convoluted week he threatens to execute a goose, has his nose slashed by a feminist poet, discovers that his secretary writes better fiction then he does, suspects his wife of having an affair with his dean, and finally confronts his philandering elderly father , the one-time king of American Literary Theory, at an abandoned amusement park.  In Hank Devereaux we meet a hero whose humour and identification with the absurd are mitigated by his love for family, friends, and, ultimately, knowledge itself. Richard Russo has written three previous novels, one of which, Nobody’s Fool, was made into a film. He lives in Maine with his family.

Rutherford, Edward
London
ISBN: 0517591812 (USA); 0712654194 (UK)
Nominated by: Richmond Public Library, Virginia
London is both a narrative exploration of the development of a great city from humble trading post to the hub of a mighty empire, and the very human story of the men and women who made it great. Through the lives of and adventures of memorable characters - Julius, the small-time Roman coin forger; Dame Barnikel, who runs the tavern from where Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims set out; Geoffrey Ducket, the founder of a dynasty; Edmund Meridith and the actors of the Globe Theatre, and little Lucy, living by Dicken’s muddy Thames - we watch London grow from its first beginnings and become part of the wonderful pageant that continues to flow today. Edward Rutherford was born in Salisbury, England, and educated at Cambridge.

Rygg, Pernille
The Butterfly Effect
translated from the Norwegian by Joan Tate
ISBN: 1860463118 (UK & USA)
Nominated by: Deichmanske Bibliothek, Norway
On a cold, dark night in Oslo, Igi Heitmann pores over the debris in her dead father’s office, trying to piece together the last days of his life as a failed private detective. She discovers a strange butterfly medallion in his desk, which leads to the discovery of a young woman, Siv Underland, in a snow-drift, with two bullets in her head and a gun in her hand. Igi learns that her father and the young woman died within hours of each other. Who killed Siv Underland, and did the same person kill Igi’s father? Igi is an under-employed research psychologist, with more than enough problems of her own, but she soon turns detective and finds herself on a trail that leads to the final days of her father and Siv Underland, and to Oslo’s underworld of corruption, sadism, and child abuse. Pernille Rygg was born in 1963: The Butterfly Effect is her first novel.

S
Saramago, José
Blindness
translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero
ISBN: 1860462979 (UK); 0151002517 (USA)
Nominated by: Biblioteca de la Universitat de Barcelona, Spain; Cardiff Central Library, Wales; Helsingin Kaupunginkirjasto, Finland; Biblioteca Municipal Central de Lisboa, Portugal
The first man to succumb to the white blindness had been in his car, waiting for the lights to change. His wife took him to the ophthalmologist, who did not know what to make of it and himself went blind while looking up his textbooks. To contain what was fast becoming an epidemic, the Government has the blind rounded up and interned in a lunatic asylum, the blind in one wing and the sighted who had been in contact with them in the other, with armed guards to prevent their escape. But still the blindness spread, sparing no one except the ophthalmologist’s wife, who claimed to be blind in order to stay with her husband. Blindness depicts a perfect nightmare: an advanced urban society that all too quickly reverts to barbarism as the entire infrastructure of communal living collapses. José Saramago was born in Portugal in 1922 and became a full-time writer in 1979. He has written novels, plays, poetry, short stories, and non-fiction and been translated into more than twenty languages. He was short listed for the 1996 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, for his book,  The Gospel according to Jesus Christ, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.

Schlink, Bernhard SHORT-LISTED
The Reader
translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway
ISBN: 1861590636 (UK); 0679442790 (USA)
Nominated by: Birmingham City Libraries, England; Stadtbucherei Frankfurt, Germany; Stadtbuchereien Hannover, Germany; Houston Public Library, Texas; Bibliotheque Municipale de Lyon, France; State Library of Queensland, Australia
A schoolboy in post-war Germany, Michael Berg has a secretive affair with an older woman, Hanna. He learns little about her, but is shocked and somehow guilty when she simply disappears. Some years later, as a law student, Michael is in court to follow a major case. To his amazement he recognises Hanna as one of the defendants. Her attitude during the trial is bizarre, as she allows herself be presented as the ringleader of her co-defendants and seems to be wilfully mishandling her defence. Michael suddenly understands that her behaviour conceals a secret buried deeper even than her terrible crimes. The past of their relationship and of Germany trap Michael for the rest of his life, haunted by the memories of a relationship that he cannot move beyond and by the dilemma of an entire generation. Bernhard Schlink was born in 1944. He is a Professor of Law at the University of Berlin.

Semprun, Jorge
Literature or Life
translated from the French by Linda Coverdale
ISBN: 0670872881 (UK & USA)
Nominated by: Biblioteka Publiczna M. St. Warszawy, Poland
‘What’s essential’, I tell Lieutenant Rosenfeld, ‘is the experience of Evil. Of course, you can experience that anywhere...You don’t need concentration camps to know Evil. But here, this experience will turn out to have been crucial, and massive, invading everywhere ... it’s the experience of radical Evil’. Jorge Semprun was twenty years old when arrested for activities with the French Resistance. He was sent to Buchenwald concentration camp. Literature or Life is a deeply personal account not only of his time at the camp, but also of the years before and after, of his painful attempts to write this book. Literature or Life is a narrative that draws on the author’s experience, but extends beyond that experience into the realms of fiction and imagination. Jorge Semprun was born in Madrid in 1923. He is both a novelist and a screenwriter and served as Spain’s Minister for Culture from 1988 to 1991. He lives in Paris.

Shields, Carol
Larry's Party
ISBN: 1857026160 (UK); 0670873926 (USA); 0679308776 (Canada)
Nominated by: Detroit Public Library, Michigan; Flemish Central Public Libraries, Belgium; Ottawa Public Library, Canada; Mediatheque Francois-Mitterrand de Poitiers, France; Vancouver Public Library, Canada
Larry and his naive young wife, Dorrie, spend their honeymoon in England. In the ordered riotousness of Hampton Court maze, Larry discovers the passion of his life. Perhaps his ever-growing obsession with mazes may help him find a way through the bewilderment deepening about him as, through twenty years and two failed marriages, he tries to understand his own needs, and those of his parents, friends, and lovers. Carol Shields’ previous novels include The Stone Diaries which won the Pulitzer Prize and was short listed for the Booker Prize. She was born and raised in Chicago but has lived in Canada since 1957: she is the Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg.

Shreve, Anita
The Weight of Water
ISBN: 0316789976 (USA); 0349109117 (UK)
Nominated by: Wellington City Council, New Zealand
On a small island off the New Hampshire coast in 1873, two women were brutally murdered by an unknown assailant. A third woman survived the attack, hiding in a sea cave until morning. More than one hundred years later, a photographer, Jean, comes to the island to shoot a photo-essay about the legendary crime. Immersing herself in accounts of the lives of the fishermen’s wives who were the victims, she becomes obsessed with the barrenness of the women’s days: the stultifying labour, the long stretches of loneliness, the relentless winds that threatened to sweep them off the rocky island. How could a marriage survive such conditions? Was the misery of everyday life connected to the killings? With her own marriage in difficulties Jean feels the forces of a century earlier come alive inside her, leading her to the verge of actions she never imagined herself capable of: will her choices destroy all she values or bring her safely home? Anita Shreve is the author of five previous novels and she has published short stories and non-fiction. She lives in Massachusetts.

Stout, Mira
One Thousand Chestnut Trees
ISBN: 0006548571 (UK); 1573220736 (USA)
Nominated by: Gateshead Libraries and Arts, England
Following three generations of the Min family, One Thousand Chestnut Trees takes the stories of the narrator’s mother and grandmother and creates a picture of Korea and its traumatic history during the past century. Anna’s journey into their stories and Korea’s history begins with the arrival, in Vermont, of her Uncle Hong-do. Her world is turned-upside-down as she is drawn into the world of her ancestral homeland. Grappling with the problems of mixed-race identity, and evocative of language and landscape, One Thousand Chestnut Trees brings Korea’s cultured civilisation into  focus. Mira Stout was born in New York City and has lived in France, Italy and England. She has contributed to a large number of publications, including Vanity Fair and the Spectator: this is her first book.

T
Theroux, Paul
Kowloon Tong
ISBN: 0140266453 (UK); 0395860296 (USA)
Nominated by: London Borough Libraries, England
Hong Kong 1996, and the colony is about to revert to Chinese rule. Betty Mullard and her son, Bunt (short for Baby Bunting), come to the realisation that their way of life is about to change. For Balham-born Betty, Hong Kong is part of Britain, and allows her a life style that she would never have been able to afford back home. For Bunt, the colony is the only home he's ever known. When their comfortable life of eating roast beef at Fatty's Chophouse and going to the races at Happy Valley is threatened, Betty and Bunt cope by ignoring the threat. Then Mr. Hung, a representative of China's People's Liberation Army, enters their lives and, for the first time, Betty and Bunt must face the reality of the coming hand-over. Paul Theroux was born and educated in the United States, graduating from university in 1963. He has written many works of fiction and travel writing and has won many awards, including the Whitbread Prize, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

U
Urquhart, Jane
The Underpainter
ISBN: 0771086644 (Canada); 0747534012 (UK); 0670877263 (USA)
Nominated by: Ottawa Public Library, Canada; Vancouver Public Library, Canada
The Underpainter tells the story of Austin Fraser, an American minimalist painter now in his fifties, who, after receiving a letter concerning a woman he knew long ago, finds himself surrounded by his past.  He is haunted by those whose lives became inextricably linked with his: a young Canadian soldier and china painter; a First World War nurse; the well-known painter Rockwell Kent; and the beautiful, self-sufficient Sara Pengelly, who became Austin’s model and then his mistress. Spanning decades, the story moves from upstate New York to the north shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Superior; from France during World War I to New York City in the 1920s and ‘30s - leading to the novel’s startling climactic moments. Jane Urquhart was born in Ontario and has published poetry, short stories, and novels. She has won several prizes for her work and was short listed for the 1996 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. She served on the panel of judges for the 1997 Award.

V
Valdés, Zoé
Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada
translated from the Spanish by Sabina Cienfuegos
ISBN: 1559703628 (USA)
Nominated by: Leipziger Stadtische Bibliotheken, Germany
Born the year of Castro’s revolution, the daughter of a hero of the sugarcane harvest - Che Guevera himself draped a Cuban flag across her mother’s pregnant belly - Yocandra embodies its promise and hope. But she grows up to see how the regime is turning her beautiful island into a wasteland of despair, and embarks on her own course of survival. For Yocandra and her friends, coping with life in Cuba means escaping into dreams, humour, and sex, and developing an appetite for the absurdities of existence. Kindred spirits and lost souls, their rebellion and rage against the regime also expresses their fierce love for their country, a patriotism that can feel like a prison sentence. Zoé Valdés was born in Havana in 1959. She lives in Paris with her daughter.

van Heerden, Etienne
Leap Year
translated from the Afrikaans by Malcolm Hacksley
ISBN: 0140262164 (South Africa)
Nominated by: Durban Metropolitan Library Services, South Africa; Pretoria Community Library, South Africa
The Butler family has wealth and influence in the Eastern Cape, an important factor in a time of great political upheaval, especially when oil is discovered in the middle of  the town of Port Cecil. The discovery brings the demands of the local black civic organisation into focus. At the forefront of black aspirations is MaNdlovu Thandani, larger than life and seemingly indestructible. In opposition, Seamus Butler, a man whose dark moods and recurring depressions surge relentlessly through him. Leap Year is a story which carves a path through the lives of the people of this Eastern Cape district during a time when beauty and cruelty, violence and hope all become entangled. Etienne van Heerden is an associate professor at the University of Cape Town. His best known novel is Ancestral Voices and his work has been translated into many languages.

Veciana-Suarez, Ana
The Chin Kiss King
ISBN: 0374121303 (USA)
Nominated by: Pikes Peak Library, Colorado
The Chin Kiss King is a heart-wrenching story of the lives of three generations of Cuban American women: Cuca, zealous believer in spirits; her daughter, Adela, a superstitious, gambling cosmetologist with a weakness for men; and Adela’s daughter, Maribel, a marketing-research assistant who draws spiritual nourishment from the older women. When Maribel’s son, Victor, is born with a severe birth-defect in 1992, the three women who make up his family and who are his sustenance are forced to confront the inextricable ties that bind them to one another. Ana Veciana-Suarez is a columnist with The Miami Herald: she was born in Cuba and now lives in Miami with her five children.

Viewegh, Michal
Bringing up girls in Bohemia
translated from the Czech by A. G. Brain
ISBN: 1887378057 (UK & USA)
Nominated by: Mestska Knihovna v Praze, Czech Republic
Bringing up Girls in Bohemia is the story of young Beata Kralova and her not-so-young tutor. Beata is the twenty-years-old drop-out daughter of Denis Kral, a Czech “new millionaire” with suspect connections. Beata embraces lover after lover as well as various causes new to Eastern Europe: the environment, animal rights, feminism, consumerism, new age religion. A hilarious portrait of today’s Prague, it’s gangsters and their ex-secret police bodyguards, the expatriate Americans, and many extraordinary Czechs, Bringing up Girls in Bohemia is also a serious exploration of the role of the writer in post-communist Central Europe.

W
White, Edmund
The Farewell Symphony: a novel
ISBN: 0679434771 (USA); 0701136219 (UK)
Nominated by: Chicago Public Library, Illinois
Named after the Hayden work in which the players leave the stage one-by-one until only a single violinist is left, The Farewell Symphony is the story of a man who has outlived most of his friends. Having reached the six-month anniversary of his lover’s death, he embarks on a journey of remembrance that will recount his struggle to become a writer and his discovery of what it means to be a gay man. The narrative takes us from the 1960s to the present, from erotic scenes in the back rooms of New York clubs to episodes of hilarity in the salons of Paris, to moments of family truth in the American Midwest. As the story carries us across time, space and society, one man’s magnificently realised story grows to encompass an entire generation. Edmund White was born in Cincinnati, USA, in 1940. He has taught literature and creative writing and published several novels. His novel A Boy’s Own Story is widely regarded as an American classic, and his last book, Genet: a biography, was awarded a National Book Critics Award. Edmund White lives in Paris.

Williams, Niall
Four Letters of Love
ISBN: 0374158177 (USA); 0330352687 (UK)
Nominated by: Cleveland Public Library, Ohio; District of Columbia Public Library; Dublin Corporation Public Libraries, Ireland; Veria Central Public Library, Greece
Nicholas Coughlan is twelve when God speaks to his father, William, telling him to give up his job and devote his life to painting. Nicholas and his mother are left alone and adrift, as his father disappears sporadically to the other side of Ireland, where he daubs his canvases in the Atlantic light, obeying what he believes to be God’s will. On an island off the west coast, Isabel Gore lives with her parents and her brother Sean, whose brilliant musical gift has been silenced by a seizure which has left him unable to walk or speak. Isabel is sent away to convent school in Galway, but weighed down by guilt at the fate of her brother, she escapes at the first opportunity. Nicholas and Isabel were made for each other, but how will they ever know? Niall Williams is the author of several plays and, with his wife Christine Breen, has written four non-fiction books about life in Kiltumper, in the west of Ireland , where he now lives.

Winterson, Jeanette
Gut Symmetries
ISBN: 1862070423 (UK); 0679454756 (USA)
Nominated by: Veria Central Public Library, Greece
Funny, tender, and full of surprises, Gut Symmetries is a celebration of love in all its frailty, confusion and excess. Set on board the QE2, and in New York and Liverpool, the novel centres on Jove, a married physicist; Alice, a single physicist who becomes his mistress; and Stella, Jove's wife and, later, Alice's lover. They meet on the QE2 and from there the three take turns telling their versions of the story. Gut Symmetries is a collage of memories, snippets of scientific theory, meditations on abstract concepts like truth, and the events surrounding Jove, Alice, and Stella's affair. Jeanette Winterson is the author of five works of fiction, a comic book, two screenplays and a collection of essays. She has won the Whitbread Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and the E.M. Forster Award.

Wynveen, Tim
Angel Falls
ISBN: 1550138715 (Canada)
Nominated by: Jamaica Library Service
After forty years of blocking out the details of his early life, a tragedy summons Benoni Van Buskierke back home to Angel Falls. There, finally shaken from his emotional exile, he realises he must face his greatest fear - that beyond the torment of his own past lay deeper and more terrible truths. A would-be anthropologist, Ben begins to sift through the elements of his life, the myths and rituals, the symbols and mysteries that have shaped him, as well as his parents before him. For only in so doing will he at last be able to reconcile past and present, to piece together the puzzle of his haunted life. Before turning his attention to writing, Tim Wynveen had a successful career as a musician. He lives in Toronto.

Y
Yoshimoto, Banana
Amrita
translated from the Japanese by Russell F. Wasden
ISBN: 0571193749 (UK); 080211590X (USA)
Nominated by: Chuo University Library, Tokyo
A celebrated actress who has died in mysterious and shocking circumstances leaves behind an unconventional extended family that includes an older sister, a woman in her twenties through whose eyes the story is told; a young brother who possesses mystical powers; and a fiancé who is writing a novel with uncanny parallels to his own life. Together they embark on a journey that takes them through grief and suffering, memories lost and regained, forbidden romance, redemption and recovery, including a confrontation with the spirits of the dead on a remote island in the Pacific, once the site of a fatal clash between Japanese and American forces. Banana Yoshimoto was born in 1964. She is the author of three previous novels and has won numerous awards for her writing. She lives in Tokyo.

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