Man, Desi longs to get that Booker!

I have a clear favourite in the Shortlist for this year’s MAN BOOKER PRIZE.

*He’s JULIAN BARNES, 59, twice previously shortlisted, “who was immediately installed aas the bookmakers’ favourite with Arthur & George, a work which relies heavily on a true-life story involving the writer Arthur Conan Doyle”. And dear I.Cowws, please do not angrify Desi on Thursday morning thinking this Conan is of that Barbaric fame, OK!

The above (ref: B Prize shortlist, not the Ignorant Cows who roam Desis Place…)was extracted from ManBookerprize.com) press release:

**
Thursday 08 September 2005 15:30 -

THE 2005 MAN BOOKER PRIZE FOR FICTION SHORTLIST

'The richest year for contemporary British and Commonwealth fiction since the launch of the Booker Prize in 1969’
- The Observer, 7 August 2005


JOHN BANVILLE, JULIAN BARNES, SEBASTIAN BARRY, KAZUO ISHIGURO, ALI SMITH and ZADIE SMITH are the six authors shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the UK’s best known literary award. The shortlist was announced by the chair of judges, John Sutherland, at a press conference at the Man Group offices in London today (Thursday 8 September).

The six shortlisted books were chosen from a longlist of 17 and are:
Author Title Publisher

Banville, John The Sea Picador
Barnes, Julian Arthur & George Jonathan Cape
Barry, Sebastian A Long Long Way Faber & Faber
Ishiguro, Kazuo Never Let Me Go Faber & Faber
Smith, Ali The Accidental Hamish Hamilton
Smith, Zadie On Beauty Hamish Hamilton


John Sutherland, Chair of Judges, comments:
“The selection of a shortlist, the judges felt, was an unusually difficult process this year. There was sufficient quality for two distinguished lists. We were aware that the rules require that the award be to the best novel. The strength of the year’s competition can be measured by the fact that three good books by previous Man Booker winners were finally not selected. This shortlist, we believe, witnesses to the remarkable quality of the current state of fiction. We look forward to the final round."

The winner receives £50,000 with a guaranteed increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer bound edition of their own book.

The judging panel for the 2005 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: John Sutherland (Chair); fiction editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Lindsay Duguid; writer and antiquarian book dealer, Rick Gekoski; novelist, Josephine Hart; and literary editor of The Evening Standard, David Sexton.

The winner will be announced on Monday 10th October at an awards ceremony at Guildhall, London and will be broadcast live on BBC TWO.
-ends-

***
Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape, £17.99

Arthur and George grow up worlds apart in late nineteenth-century Britain: Arthur in shabby-genteel Edinburgh, George in the vicarage of a small Staffordshire village. Arthur becomes a doctor, and then a writer; George a solicitor in Birmingham. Arthur is to become one of the most famous men of his age, George remains in hardworking obscurity. But as the new century begins, they are brought together by a sequence of events that made sensational headlines at the time as ‘The Great Wyrley Outrages’.
With both detailed research and vivid imagination, Julian Barnes brings to life this long-forgotten case, and the inner lives of these two very different men with stunning clarity. This is a novel in which the events of a hundred years ago constantly set off contemporary echoes, a novel about low crime and high spirituality, guilt and innocence, identity, nationality and race; about what we think, what we believe, and what we know.
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester 1946 and educated in London and Magdalen College, Oxford. He has written nine novels, including Metroland, (won 1981 Somerset Maugham Award); Flaubert's Parrot, (shortlisted 1984 Booker Prize, won Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and precipitated Barnes being the first Englishman to be awarded the Prix Medicis); A History of the World in 10 and ½ Chapters (1989); England, England (shortlisted 1998 Booker Prize); and Love etc (2000), and two collections of short stories, Cross Channel and The Lemon Tree.
Barnes received the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1986) and was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Artes et des Lettres (1988). He was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation of Hamburg (1993).
For further information or interview requests please contact Christian Lewis on 020 7840 8539 or email clewis@randomhouse.co.uk





***************INTERRUPTUS FOR OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT***********

BTW, Desi’s Place is six months old today.

When I started surfing blogs like my Sifu’s (JeffOoi's screenshots, who else!), I though BTW was for “between the two of us”.

HeHeHe… was easy to GU’SS. (The last stated of course refers to that brand, Desi uses, also can.:)

S’X was even easier. If you’re straight, it stands for SiX. If your are gay, it stands for SeX. If you are in-between, it stands for SuX! If you’re nONE of the above, it stands for SoX. If still you’re far from all these, but like Desi, like to blow somethin’ once in a while, it stands for SaX. But any other variations also-can, for today ends where it’s started yesterday as FORePlay, now it’s PoSTPlay.

PoST stands for after, behind the main act, second-class dish, For drifters like Sab, kyels who asked: what’s Challenge 3? After the game had ended the day after the day before. …you’ve got my drift … the cleaning up following the Fat Lady’s Song ….

But some shorties like WTF or WTFs followed by the Xcalmation mark like this ! still stump me. I seldom use such four-letter shorts because it is not like NICE, which is also 4-letter, like Hell, which is also 4-…I digress ‘nuff, which is also 4-….You get the draft.

So Desi has caught on, created my own branding – like mGf – if you have to ask, then you’re not mf fRiend!
Then I often end in”Chow” until one OZ lad’ took it to mean a swear word from a baddie Jinjang Chinaman (Malaysian equivalent to Croc Dundee), so I rarely have used this parting shot sin(ned)ce. Only to mGf in the plural, where any MISsunderstanding is easily smoothened over with just “soly” and two TTariks, maybe a fly 'iss ...(not KakiTarik – that one is for pulling the legs), T is for The, from Hari Hari Does It.


Also, L’VE, so there is no connonotation of that relations bewteen two people (lovers;)?) – it’s LiVE and LoVE.
So on this auspicious day in youngDesi’s life, here’s Happy Six-Months’ Birthday to Me. Reminds me, like Mr Bean in one lONEly Xmas episode when he sent himself a Xmas card!, that I have to get meself a Birthday Cake, and later adjourn to Haridas this evening at 8PM to celeb. Jointly, Haridas’ great achievement on the Tamilfront, YLChong in anticipation of that Hooker’s Prizelist!

CHOW! ;)
Go Get a L’VE!:)


BTW, mGf Haridas received was weighed down by garlands (no, not Judy, she’s of another planet) on being honoured at the Seremabn Town Hall by the South Indian arts council for hid “literary” works in Tamil.

YLChong is waiting in the wings for his nama to be called --- for the Man Booker prize, if not, (WO)man Hooker One, also can!

BTW, wat's the short for "between the two of us"?