Samuel Johnson Prize 2013 Shortlist

We are well into Award Season now, so yet another shortlist of books nominated for a prize has just been announced; the one for the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize, which is very special in a way, since it doesn't include any fiction titles among the contenders. The winner will be revealed on November the 4th. You can see the shortlisted books below:

David Crane - Empires of the Dead
William Dalrymple - Return of a King: The Battle for Afghanistan
Dave Goulson - A Sting in the Tale
Charlotte Higgins - Under Another Sky
Lucy Hughes-Hallett - The Pike
Charles Moore - Margaret Thatcher

Samuel Johnson prize longlist

The Samuel Johnson prize longlist has been announced. The longlisted books are:

Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
One on One by Craig Brown
Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis
The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen
Feathers by Thor Hansen
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane
Inside the Centre: The Life of J Robert Oppenheimer by Ray Monk
Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius by Sylvia Nasar
Winter King by Thomas Penn
The Better Angels of our Nature by Steven Pinker
The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston
Strindberg: A Life by Sue Prideaux
Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie

The winner will be revealed on 12 November.

Book Review: Havana Real by Yoani Sánchez

Havana Real includes some of the texts that Yoani Sánchez, the most famous Cuban blogger, have posted on her blog over a long period of time, and which in a very direct I’d dare say way, manage to dissolve the illusions of all those people in the west, especially Europe, that still think that Cuba is a socialist paradise of sorts.

Sánchez is, even though it would be unfair to label her, the voice of generation Y (the Greek Y and not the Latin as she’s fast to point out), as far as her homeland is concerned, since through her posts in the internet she has managed to shine a light on the other side of her country, the one the hordes of tourists never see and the comrades of faraway lands choose to ignore.

She writes about the oppression of the people by a ruthless regime, the widespread poverty, the corruption, and the intimidation tactics that are often used against the opponents of the state, the collapse of the health and education systems and the lack of critical for survival supplies in the markets. And she invites or rather dares all those people who claim that they sympathize with the hardships of the Cuban people to: “Come here and live as Cubans for a week. Then we can talk.”

Her mantra is, paraphrasing president Obama: “Yes, we want.” And they want nothing more but the basics: bread, education, freedom, in a country where someone can end up in jail for being predisposed to commit a crime.

1984 is there, and it really looks bad.

The Pulitzer Prize Winners announced

Here are the winners of this year's Pulitzer Prizes in categories relevant to this blog:

Fiction

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Runners up:

The Privileges by Jonathan Dee
The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee

Nonfiction

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Runners up:

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our BrainThe Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr
Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S.C. Gwynne

History

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery by Eric Foner


Runners up:

Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South by Stephanie McCurry
Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston by Michael Rawson

Biography or Autobiography

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Runners up:

The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century by Alan Brinkley
Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon by Michael O'Brien

Poetry

The Best of It: New and Selected Poems by Kay Ryan

Runners up:

The Common Man by Maurice Manning
Break the Glass by Jean Valentine