Monday, October 09, 2006

Commonwealth Prizes and Banned Books

Commonwealth Prize

We received an email and entry forms for the 2007 Prize recently from an assistant working on the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, a literary award established in 1987 to 'reward the upsurge of new Commonwealth fiction and ensure that works of merit reach a wider audience outside their country of origin'. (Previous winners include, Andrea Levy, Louis de Bernieres, J.M. Coetzee, Zadie Smith and Vikram Seth.)

As we know, The Prize is open to any Commonwealth citizen and any work of fiction is eligible with the exception of any work written for children alone, or drama or poetry. (From their website.)

They said they were currently updating their publisher lists for the 2007 Prize. It’s great that Silverfish Books has been noticed by The Commonwealth Writer's Prize organisation. Now, if only we had writers to nominate ...

More books banned in Malaysia

Latest in the list of casualties is Immortality and Laughable Loves by Milan Kundera. We can practically hear your, wha-aa-at? We can only say, to those who are new here, "Welcome to Malaysia."