Madeleine Thien, Canada's newest literary star, a favourite to win prestigious Man Booker Prize
Vancouver-born author won Governor General's Award, also shortlisted for Giller Prize
MadeleineThienis Canada's newest literary star making a splash in Canada and abroad with her novelDo NotSay We HaveNothing nabbinga high-profiletrio of nominations for the Man Booker Prize, the Giller Prizeand the Governor General's Literary Awards.
Thethree are among the world's mostprestigiousand lucrative literary honours:the Man Booker carries a prize of50,000 (approx$80,000 Cdn), theGiller$100,000 and theGovernor General's Literary Award $25,000.Thien'salso up for the Quebec Writers' Federation Literary Award.Winners typicallysee a huge jump in book sales.
Thien won the Governor General Literary Award for fiction in Canada early Tuesday morning and will learn the Man Booker outcome at a gala taking place in London this evening.
For what it's worth, the Montreal-based, Vancouver-born author's acclaimed third novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, is currently the Booker favourite, according to well-known betting agency Ladbrokes.
Some literary critics also favour her for a Booker win.
"Madeleine Thien is very high in the bookie's odds and has been very high all along," Claire Armitstead, books editor at the Guardian and Observer, told CBC News.
"I think she's leading 2 to1, which is quite surprising because this is a very big book. It's a testing book.It's about a big hard period of history. And I'm absolutely delighted."
This book, though it's very specifically set in China, does what great literature does,which is to make the specific universal.- Claire Armitstead, The Guardian
"Personally, I would love her to win," said Armitstead.
"She's a real artist:the sort of writer who invests five years of her life in finding out about something in a really big way."
For Thien,who will attend the black-tie Booker gala dinner at London's Guildhall which will be broadcast on the BBC the attention has been a bit overwhelming.
"It's hard to take it all in. It's been such an incredible time for the book," shetold CBC News lastFriday,ahead of an appearance at the Vancouver Writers Festival.
"I'm really happy for the novel. I'm overjoyed that it's finding its way to so many readers," she said.
"I can't put words to it. Maybe in six months I'll feel all the complex emotions that, at the moment, are bouncing off me. I feel like I need to go through this and rise to the occasion and do my very best to celebrate everything that's happened. I feel so lucky."
Set during China's Cultural Revolution
Do Not Say We Have Nothingopens in Vancouver in 1990, as a expatriate Chinese family takes in a young woman who has fled China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.
But much of the novel is set during the time of the Cultural Revolutionand follows the lives of several musicians whose lives are thrown into tumult from the changes in their country.
Thien saysher novel may have resonated so widely with readers and prizejuries because it deals with themes of displacementand refugees fleeing political strife issues that are on people's minds due to the Syrian crisis.
"It harkens back to the cyclical nature of these catastrophes that have forced people to flee their homes or have made it so they cannot live in the ways they wish to live: in freedom, with dignity, in the places they were born and the places they would prefer to stay," she said.
"It'sa catastrophic recurring event that we seem to keep creating."
British book criticArmitsteadagrees withThien'sassessment.
"This book, though it's very specifically set in China, does what great literature does,which is to make the specific universal."
"So what it is about is the struggles of the individual to make their mark on history, to find themselves a place in history, and we are in a period of revolutions, of mass migrations of people where it is becoming harder and harder for individuals to actually have an existence and this is at base what this book is about. And that's a story for everyone."
Unfortunately, much of the book's subject matter is still considered too sensitive in China to allow her novel to be published there, because the government controls which books may be published, saidThien.
"But what has been extraordinary is there have been Chinese publishers who are interested in publishing," she said.
"We all hope at some point in the near future it will be possible."
If Thiendoes bring home just a few of the literary honours for which she is nominated,it could boost herchances even there.
CBC-TV will broadcast the Scotiabank Giller Prize Gala on Nov.7 at 9 p.m.ET(10 pm AT, 10:30 pm Nfld)
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