So the race is on, and bookies William Hill has Peter Carey and Ian McEwan riding high at 5-2 to win the £21,000 Booker prize on October 17th. The fact that both have previously won the prize, now in its 33rd year, won't, it seems, weigh against them, with all concerned adamant this week that the only thing that matters is that the best book wins. Interestingly, the two favourities are the oldies in the field, in their 50s. After that, the judges went for a new generation of writers. Of the rest on the shortlist , announced in London on Tuesday, Andrew Miller is only 41, and the other three - Ali Smith, David Mitchell and Rachel Seiffert - are all under 40. Another fascinating aspect of the six-writer shortlist is its links to the University of East Anglia's prestigious creative writing course. Ian McEwan was one of the late Malcolm Bradbury's first students there. Andrew Miller is another alumnus, and Ali Smith now teaches there.
The announcement ceremony - the literary Oscars this side of the Atlantic - at London's Guildhall will, as usual, be televised.
It's a book small in size, and short on words, but full of resonances. Maeve Brennan's novella The Visitor is about to be published in this country by New Island Books. Irish-born Brennan died in heartbreaking circumstances in New York in 1993. She was a beautiful and esoteric Irishwoman, the daughter of a diplomat posted to Washington, who was exceptionally gifted both as a New Yorker journalist and short-story writer. Her life and mental health both collapsed, and she lived out her last years in a succession of hotel rooms and a broom cupboard of the New Yorker, eventually being diagnosed with schizophrenia and dying alone and destitute. The Visitor, a haunting narrative about a young girl whose parents are both dead, and who returns to Ireland from Paris to live with her emotionally cold grandmother, was discovered only recently in a university archive. It's been published in the US - and has already been memorably reviewed on these pages by Clare Boylan - but this will be the book's first appearance this side of the Atlantic. An opal of a book: a gem both beautiful and unlucky.
The publishing industry's most respected travel book award is the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. The winner was revealed this week, the same day the Booker shortlist was announced, which seems a bit odd, since it would have generated more publicity by running on another day. The writer who won this year also, remarkably, won the award last year, Stanley Stewart. His book, In the Empire of Genghis Khan: A Journey Among Nomads, is published by Flamingo, and in the irritatingly catchy line of an ad, it does exactly what it does on the tin. Stewart had the idea of going to find Genghis Khan's descendants, who live on the Mongolian steppes, via Istanbul, the Black Sea and the Aral Sea. One thousand miles of his extraordinary journey through Mongolia was on horseback, as he attempted, very successfully, to interpret and capture something of a culture about which Westerners still know so little.
They are billing it as Europe's biggest poetry competition; the FΘile Filiochta. Entries are being sought for poems in Irish, English, German, French, Italian, Welsh, Spanish, Scots Gaelic and Swedish. It's the 13th year of the competition, which is supported by libraries in these countries, with a total of £312,230 in prize money. The closing date is October 6th. Entry forms are available from International Poetry Competition, PO Box 6983, Blackrock, Co Dublin.
Stories now, and the annual Fish Short Story Prize, in its eighth year, is looking for entries. The prizewinning story will get £1,500 and the 18 best stories will be published in its annual collection. One of the competition's strengths is that it has such high-profile judges. This year, they are Mary Morrissy, William Wall and Christoper Hope. Stories must not exceed 5,000 words and the closing date is November 30th. There's an entry fee of £8. More information from 027-61246 or info@fishpublishing.com