The short list has been published for the 2012 Scotiabank Giller Prize for works of Canadian fiction. The first place winner will receive a prize of $50,000. Here are the four candidates: Will Ferguson’s novel
419 was praised as a global work that tells us the ways in which we are now bound together and reminds us of the things that will always keep us apart. Alix Ohlin’s novel
Inside begins when a woman mistakes a man for a log. It was described by the jury as a novel about people “that jumps between decades, locations and characters with a precision that makes Ohlin’s hard work seem effortless.
The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler revolves around the mystery of Lily Azerov. The novel “shifts through Lily’s past and her daughter, Ruth’s present, interwoven with the perceptions of her whole extended family, as they adjust to the comforts of Montreal” after the horrors of the Holocaust. Kim Thúy’s novel
Ru, translated by Sheila Fischman, is the story of a journey from Viet Nam to Quebec. The jury said “Thúy is a born storyteller, but she rewrites the traditional immigrant narrative in a completely new way.”
Whirl Away, a short story collection by Newfoundland author and journalist Russell Wangersky, was praised as a collection in which “each story stands starkly and wonderfully alone. The jurors were Irish author and screenwriter Roddy Doyle; Canadian publisher, writer, and essayist Anna Porter; and American author and satirist Gary Shteyngart. The prize was founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994 in memory of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller. The winner will be announced at a gala on October 30.
