The Thing Around Your Neck byChimamanda Ngozi Adichie

The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria, and the land of her birth informs her short stories, whether the setting of the tale is Africa or the United States. Plaintive and poignant, they focus on characters and events that seem at once universal and foreign. A wife tries to come to terms with her husband’s infidelity, but while she is living in America, he is maintaining two households, one in Philadelphia with our protagonist and another in Lagos with his girlfriend. A woman thinks back on a dreadful experience in her childhood, one that resulted in the death of her older brother and realizes the ongoing impact of her actions down to the present day. A mother mourns the loss of her son, but her four-year-old was killed by government henchmen, and now she must decide whether to seek asylum in America or stay near the grave of her dear child. The stories show the reader the dilemma of the person who is at once living in one world but still attached to another one, a stranger in both lands, always seeking balance and peace but finding those gifts almost always out of reach.

D. L. S.

Alice Munro Wins Booker International Prize

May 27th, 2009 it was announced that Alice Munro had won the 2009 Man Booker International Prize for fiction. The Canadian short story writer was the third writer to win the prize. See the official announcement for more details.

The prize is awarded every two years. Unlike the annual Booker, which recognizes a single work of fiction in English, the International Prize is awarded for an entire body of work and is open to writers from around the world. The first International Prize was went to Albanian writer Ismail Kadare in 2005; Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe won it in 2007.

Munro has a new collection of stories coming out in November in the US: Too Much Happiness: Stories.

These are some of Munro's works available in Harford County Public Library:
Runaway
The View from Castle Rock
Hateship, friendship, courtship, loveship, marriage
The Love of a Good Woman

See also Readers Place for a list of short story collections by other writers.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

In a series of short stories, Jhumpa Lahiri explores what it is like to be a well educated, reasonably prosperous and successful American of Asian Indian extraction in a land that is of one’s birth and yet a foreign land notwithstanding. The characters of the stories seem always to be searching, restless in their struggle to find an identity, a place, a sense of belonging that grows both from the land around them and from what remains inside themselves. Alienation prevails or is overcome as the young men and women of these stories struggle to find their place in family, land, and nationality, in short, in unaccustomed earth.

Submitted by D. L Sebly, staff

Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature Announced

Sana Krasikov's debut short story collection, One More Year, has won the $100,000 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature for emerging writers. The Jewish Book Council noted that Krasikov won "based on her demonstration of a fresh vision and evidence of future potential to further contribute to the Jewish literary community."

Allen Hoffman, one of this year's fiction judges, said, "Her characters are often alienated and confused, but her stories are always clear and precise, because Krasikov deeply understands her characters' aspirations, fears, and stubborn passion for survival. Her elegant, revealing narratives imbue their fragile, vulnerable lives with an imposing dignity." (This book is on order for Harford County Public Library and will appear in our catalog shortly).

The $25,000 Sami Rohr Prize Choice Award went to Dalia Sofer, author of
The Septembers of Shiraz. Find this book in our catalog.

Story Prize Awarded to "Our Story Begins" by Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff has won the $20,000 Story Prize for his collection Our Story Begins Find this book in our catalog

Runners up were Jhumpa Lahiri for Unaccustomed Earth Find this book on our catalog and Joe Meno for Demons in the Spring Find this book in our catalog.

Judges Daniel Menaker, Rick Simonson, and Hannah Tinti cited Wolff’s work for its sense of detail and its humanity: “The previously uncollected pieces by Wolff in this new collection show an increasingly severe insistence on the most telling and specific detail as the author creates entire worlds, entire life stories, out of eloquent molecules of narrative. The emotional impact of these lapidary stories is specific and powerful.” They went on to say: “It is this great sense of the human condition, combined with the close detailing of everyday life that makes Tobias Wolff such an exceptional writer. He deserves The Story Prize, not only for his early work showcased in Our Story Begins, that many of us have studied and read and learned from in the past, but for the ten new stories included, that show he is still at the top of his game.”

Harford County Public Library also owns Our Story Begins and Unaccustomed Earth as audiobooks on CD.

Jhumpa Lahiri adds Frank O'Connor Prize to her honor role of awards

Jhumpa Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earth Find this book in our catalog US$55,055 Frank O'Connor prize for a short story collection, according to the Guardian newspaper on July 5, 2008, which reported that the contest's jurors chose to dispense with "the ritual of issuing a shortlist" because Lahiri's work "was so plainly the best book." Click here to find out about the Frank O'Connor award.

This is what it says about Unaccustomed Earth in our catalog: "From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a new work of fiction: eight stories that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers." "In the title story, Ruma, a young mother in a new city, is visited by her father, who carefully tends the earth of her garden, where he and his grandson form a special bond. But he's harboring a secret from his daughter, a love affair he's keeping all to himself. In "A Choice of Accommodations," a husband's attempt to turn an old friend's wedding into a romantic getaway weekend with his wife takes a dark, revealing turn as the party lasts deep into the night. In "Only Goodness," a sister eager to give her younger brother the perfect childhood she never had is overwhelmed by guilt, anguish, and anger when his alcoholism threatens her family. And in "Hema and Kaushik," a trio of linked stories - a luminous, intensely compelling elegy of life, death, love, and fate - we follow the lives of a girl and boy who, one winter, share a house in Massachusetts. They travel from innocence to experience on separate, sometimes painful paths, until destiny brings them together again years later in Rome."