TORONTO — CanLit legend Michael Ondaatje will face off against two red-hot up-and-coming authors for this year’s $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, one of Canada’s most popular and lucrative literary awards.
Toronto-based Ondaatje made the prize short list, announced Tuesday, for his novel The Cat’s Table, about an 11-year-old boy who journeys from Sri Lanka to England on a huge ocean liner in the early 1950s.
He’ll face stiff competition from Patrick deWitt and Esi Edugyan, two relatively unknown writers whose novels have repeatedly popped up on prize lists this fall.
Victoria-based Edugyan made the Giller cut for Half-Blood Blues, about black jazz musicians trying to survive in Europe during the Second World War.
DeWitt, a Vancouver Island native who lives in Portland, Ore., is on the Giller list for The Sisters Brothers, a comical western set amid the 1850s California gold rush.
Both books have also been shortlisted for Britain’s Man Booker Prize and for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
British Columbia-based jury member Annabel Lyon, whose debut novel The Golden Mean also made the short lists for the Giller and the Writers’ Trust prizes in 2009, said deWitt and Edugyan should brace for the glare of the spotlight.
“Most writers tend to be fairly introverted and used to being alone and that’s going to change for a little while,” said Lyon, who ended up winning the Writers’ Trust prize.
“It’s going to be interviews and festivals and book clubs and you’re going to find that you’re having to face outward, and it takes a little bit of time to adjust after the whole thing is over and be able to sort of get back to the inward place to start work again.”
Rounding out the Giller list are acclaimed Toronto author and filmmaker David Bezmozgis for his immigrant tale The Free World; Edmonton-based Globe and Mail columnist Lynn Coady for her hockey goon novel The Antagonist; and Vancouver-based Zsuzsi Gartner for her short story collection Better Living Through Plastic Explosives.
The majority of the shortlisted books have comical narratives, although American jury member Howard Norman noted the humour was sometimes also acerbic and edgy.
“So none of them, I don’t think, could be described as comic novels, but humour is an intensifying element to some of the narratives and that was an enhancement,” said the author.
Lyon said she noticed “a lot of bravery and a lot of ambition” throughout the short list.
“That’s something that really does appeal to me — when somebody takes a risk and thinks, ’I’m going to try something big or complex or difficult or new. I’m going to take a period of history that nobody has read about before, or I’m going to try on a voice that’s completely unlike me.’ I really respond to that. I really admire the bravery that goes into that.”
The jury — which also included U.K. playwright and novelist Andrew O’Hagan — selected the titles out of a record-breaking 143 books put forward by 55 publishers from across Canada.
Due to the huge number of submissions this year, the jury picked an unprecedented long list of 17 books and a short list of six finalists, instead of the usual five. They deliberated mostly through conference calls and sometimes in emails, meeting face-to-face for the first time on Monday.
Lyon said it wasn’t hard to arrive at the finalists, noting she and her fellow jurors got along well and had common tastes.
“(The discussions) were never argumentative,” she said.
“I suspect for the winner maybe we’ll take the gloves off and get into it a little more, but it’s been remarkably straightforward so far.”
This is the 18th year for the Giller, created by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in memory of his wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.
Nominated books usually receive a considerable boost in sales.
Ondaatje claimed the prize in 2000 for Anil’s Ghost. Other past winners include Alice Munro, Mordecai Richler, Margaret Atwood and Rohinton Mistry.
Montreal author Johanna Skibsrud took the Giller crown last year for her novel, The Sentimentalists.
This year’s victor will be announced at a gala ceremony broadcast on CBC-TV in Toronto on Nov. 8.