Tuesday, May 24, 2011

The world takes its cue from The HG

From the breakthrough of Jo Nesbo to the canonization of China Mieville, you'll read it here first. And today we learn that Gary Shteyngart has become the first American to win the Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction..... I love the prize, mentioned in the last paragraph below:

The author's winning novel, Super Sad True Love Story, is set in a dystopian, near-future America, where the 39-year-old Russian-American Lenny Abramov is attempting to persuade the 24-year-old Korean-American Eunice Park to fall in love with him. It "leaves you wondering whether that dull ache in your stomach is from laughter or just plain sadness", wrote Chris Cox in the Observer.
Prize judge and Hay festival director Peter Florence called the book "great literature" and "wild comedy".
"Gary Shteyngart's writing is thrilling. He's a staggeringly clever satirist who manages to create worlds and people of perfect coherence and outrageous misfortune," said Florence.
Shteyngart wins a jeroboam of champagne and a set of Wodehouse books. The author will also be presented with a pig named after his novel.

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