LONDON (AP) – Tales of troubled families from Kenya and India, the musings of an ironic New York writer and the story of emotionally bruised Canadian siblings are contenders for the Folio Prize, a lucrative fiction award open to English-language authors of any nationality.
The eight finalists for the 40,000 pound ($61,000) prize, announced Monday, include Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s Kenyan family epic “Dust”; Akhil Sharma’s Indian immigrant story “Family Life”; Brooklyn-based Ben Lerner’s autobiographical “10:04”; and Canadian author Miriam Toews’ tragicomic tale of sisterhood, “All My Puny Sorrows.”
The other finalists are U.S. writer Jenny Offill for her compact exploration of relationships in “Dept. of Speculation”; Colm Toibin for his tale of an Irish widow, “Nora Webster”; Scottish writer Ali Smith for her dual-narrative novel “How to be Both”; and Canada-born British author Rachel Cusk for her story-spinning yarn “Outline.”
Writer William Fiennes, who heads the judging panel, said all the finalists had stretched the possibilities of storytelling.
“It’s easy to say something new and it’s easy to say something true,” he said. “But these books all say something true about human experience in a way that feels like something new.”