GG short list has Thien poised for unprecedented triumph
Montreal’s Madeleine Thien achieved a hat trick of major book prize shortlistings when her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing was named Tuesday as one of five English-language fiction finalists for the Governor General’s Literary Awards.
Already on the short lists for the Man Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Thien has a chance to achieve an unprecedented across-the-board triumph. No book has ever won all three awards.
The Vancouver-born daughter of Chinese and Malaysian immigrant parents has clearly struck a nerve with her fourth book, an epic story that weaves the narratives of three students of classical music in 20th-century China and incorporates a vivid, onthe-ground evocation of the 1989 protests and massacre in Tiananmen Square. The current wave of acclaim represents a major breakthrough for a writer whose international critical standing has never previously been fully reflected in official recognition in her home country.
Joining Thien are Hamilton’s Gary Barwin for the comic historical novel Yiddish for Pirates; Vancouver’s Anosh Irani for the Bombay-set novel The Parcel; Moncton’s Kerry Lee Powell for the debut story collection Willem de Kooning ’s Paintbrush; and, Winnipeg ’s Katherena Vermette for the literary thriller The Break.
In recent years, the GGs have been widely perceived in English Canada as a contrasting counterpart to the more lucrative and flashy relative upstart Gillers, but this year’s short lists are notable for a higher-thanusual overlap between the two: in addition to Thien, both Barwin and Powell are on both lists.
Vermette is the only previous GG winner, the Métis writer having been honoured in the poetry category for her debut 2013 collection North End Love Songs.
For each of the four other writers, this year’s GG shortlisting is their first, a situation that speaks well for the state of CanLit’s health.
The GGs, founded in 1936 and celebrating their 80th anniversary this year, are unique in their crossgenre Canadian purview, honouring works in the categories of fiction, poetry, drama, non-fiction, young people’s literature (text and illustrated books) and translation, all in both English and French.
This year, roughly 1,450 titles were submitted for consideration. Each winning writer receives a prize of $25,000, with non-winning finalists receiving $1,000 each.
Four Montreal writers are among the French-language fiction finalists: Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette for La femme qui fuit; Hugues Corriveau for Les enfants de Liverpool; Martine Delvaux for Blanc dehors; and Dominique Fortier for Au péril de la mer.
Other notable Montreal successes are Marc Laboy, shortlisted in English non-fiction for Marconi: The Man Who Networked the World, and Neil Smith, recognized for his translation of Geneviève Petterson’s La déesse des mouches à feu into The Goddess of Fireflies.
The GGs’ separate recognition of French and English works precludes a crossover like that of Montrealer Catherine Leroux’s translated novel The Party Wall making this year’s Giller short list; Montrealer Lazer Lederhendler, who did that translation from Leroux’s original Le mur mitoyen, is a finalist in the GG’s French-to-English translation category alongside Smith.
A full list of this year’s shortlisted books can be seen at ggbooks.ca. The winners are announced on Tuesday, Oct. 25; the winning writers are honoured in a ceremony in Ottawa’s Rideau Hall on Nov. 30.