An update to our earlier announcement of Lloyd Jones’ placement on the Booker Prize shortlist …

Jones’ Mr Pip has missed out on the prize, which was awarded to Irish author Anne Enright for her family epic, The Gathering. While it missed out on the top spot, Mr Pip is still widely touted as the most internationally successful New Zealand book EVER, being published worldwide to critical and popular acclaim. It has also won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize and the Montana New Zealand Prize for best fiction this year.

We don’t seem to be winning much lately, but this is still a great success for Lloyd Jones (and the rest of us who hang on his literary coat-tails).

Keri Hulme’s the bone people remains the only New Zealand book to win the prestigious Booker Prize.

Book geeks unite! New Zealand can be collectively proud of having a Kiwi on the prestigious Booker Prize shortlist.

For those who don’t follow such literary things, the Booker is THE fiction writing prize to top all prizes. I mean, lordy, it must be good if their own site says the award has “the power to transform the fortunes of authors and even publishers.” Previous winners have shot to fame from obscurity (not to mention shooting to the top of bestseller lists worldwide).

Lloyd Jones is a great writer (I recommend The Book of Fame, a semi-fictional account of the 1905 All Black tour of Europe). His latest work, Mister Pip, has reached the prestigious top six finalists for the Booker Prize. Set in Papua New Guinea amidst some serious civil strife, the book interweaves personal stories with political upheaval; violence with tenderness; and native perspectives with white views. Language-wise, it’s a gem and easy to read. It’s a tale with great momentum, but be ready for some tragic moments.

The odds of a win for our Kiwi writer are put at 2:1. The last time a New Zealand writer won was in 1985 with Keri Hulme’s the bone people. Golly, it’s been more than twenty years. Must be time for a win, eh?

The full 2007 shortlist is:

• Darkmans by Nicola Barker
• The Gathering by Anne Enright
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
• Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
• On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
• Animal’s People by Indra Sinh

And if you want to sneak in a bit of light reading, try reading past Booker Prize winners – you can buy them from all good New Zealand bookshops.