Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards 2009 Shortlist

Scotland’s richest book awards have secured a new sponsor granting a generous increase for the overall Book of the Year prize to £30,000 and to category prizes of £5,000. Twenty shortlisted titles have been announced today, across the categories of fiction, literary non fiction, poetry and first book.

The renamed Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards are the next evolution of the Scottish Arts Council Book Awards which were first introduced in the 1970s. The generous sponsorship by Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust represents a long term sponsorship commitment and celebrates the Trust’s Centenary year in 2009.

Judges this year are Professor Alan Riach, Lillias Fraser and Pat Kane.

Fiction

• Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?
• James Buchan, The Gate of Air
• Beatrice Colin, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite
• Andrew Crumey, Sputnik Caledonia
• Meaghan Delahunt, The Red Book
• James Kelman, Kieron Smith,Boy
• Kei Miller, The Same Earth

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  Kieron Smith, Boy - James Kelman - Hardback
  Rejected by his brother and largely ignored by his parents, Kieron Smith finds comfort in the home of his much-loved grandparents. But when his family move to a new housing scheme on the outskirts of the city, a world away from the close community of the tenements, Kieron struggles to find a way to adapt to his new life.
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  The Luminous Life Of Lilly Aphrodite - Beatrice Colin - Paperback
  This novel tells the story of the orphaned daughter of a cabaret dancer and her rise from poverty and anonymity to film stardom, all set against the rise and fall of Berlin, the background of WWI, the debauchery of the Weimar era, the run-up to WWII, and the innovations in art and industry that accompanied it all
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  The Red Book - Meaghan Delahunt - Paperback
  20 years after the Bhopal gas disaster, three lives are bound together by a series of coincidences in this beautifully-written novel.
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  Sputnik Caledonia - Andrew Crumey - Paperback
  Robbie dreams of going to space. In 1970s Scotland this marks him out almost as much as his eccentric family does. Educated in the ways of the Left, Robbie can't entertain the idea of going into orbit with the capitalist Americans. So he gets a 'teach yourself' Russian book & settles down with Einstein's 'Meaning of Relativity' by his side.
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  When Will There Be Good News? - Kate Atkinson - Paperback
  In rural Devon, six-year-old Joanna witnesses an appalling crime. 30 years later the man convicted of the crime gets out of prison. In Edinburgh, 16-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a doctor. But Dr Hunter has gone missing & Reggie seems to be the only person who is worried. DCI Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person

Non-Fiction

• Kate Clanchy, Antigona and Me
• Janice Galloway, This is Not About Me
• Rodge Glass, Working with Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography
• Sara Maitland, A Book of Silence

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  Alasdair Gray: A Secretary's Biography - Rodge Glass - Hardback
  Glass plays Boswell to Gray's Johnson in this humorous yet rigorous biography. Glass has used the inventive techniques of Gray's fiction to bear, mixing a chronological narrative of his subject's life with his own diaries of meeting, getting to know and working with the celebrated artist, writer and campaigner.
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  This Is Not About Me - Janice Galloway - Hardback
  One of Scotland's greatest contemporary writers turns her focus, in luminous prose, to her Ayrshire childhood in the fifties and sixties.

Poetry

• Robert Crawford, Full Volume
• Jen Hadfield, Nigh-No-Place
• Frank Kuppner, Arioflotga
• Tom Pow, Dear Alice

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  Arioflotga - Frank Kuppner - Paperback
  An index of the first lines of a vast, lost poetical anthology. The poetry world was in despair when the 'Great Poetic Anthology' was lost during its preparation. Frank Kuppner gives us consolation with these recovered versions of the opening lines.
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  Dear Alice: Narratives Of Madness - Tom Pow - Hardback
  This collection of poetry explores the imaginative legacy of a nineteenth-century lunatic asylum, the Crichton in Dumfries, drawing on the richly-documented history of the site.
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  Full Volume - Robert Crawford - Paperback
  Holding in balance the ecological and the technological, ancient and modern, 'Full Volume' sings languages and cultures, people and habitats burgeoning on the brink of extinction. From revved-up battle-cry to nervous whisper, these lyrical poems praise intricate abundance.
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  Nigh-No-Place - Jen Hadfield - Paperback
  Jen Hadfield began this book on the hoof, travelling across Canada with an appetite for new landscapes. However, it is in Shetland that she becomes acutely aware of her own voice - her fluency and tongue-tiedness, repetition, hiatus and breath. Hadfield is also the author of 'Almanacs'.

First Book

• Elaine di Rollo, The Peachgrower's Almanac
• David Knowles, Meeting the Jet Man
• Andrea McNicoll, Moonshine in the Morning
• Greg Michaelson, The Wave Singer
• Andy Nicoll, The Good Mayor

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  The Good Mayor - Andrew Nicoll - Paperback
  Set in the little town of Dot in a forgotten part of the Baltic, this novel tells the story of Tibo Krovic, the good and honest Mayor of Dot, and his love for his secretary, the beautiful, lonely, but married, Mrs Agathe Stopak.
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  Meeting The Jet Man - David Knowles - Paperback
  This poetry comes direct from the cockpit of a modern fighter-bomber. It brings the sparse literature of aerial warfare bang up-to-date, aiming neither to glorify nor to apologise.
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  Moonshine In The Morning - Andrea McNicoll - Paperback
  'Moonshine in the Morning' presents an unforgettable cast of strong-minded women and their wayward husbands clinging to village life in Thailand before the relentless advance of modernity.
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  The Peachgrowers' Almanac - Elaine Di Rollo - Hardback
  'The Peachgrowers' Almanac' is a novel about feisty women, the devotion of sisters, and the Victorians' obsession with photography, medicine, collecting, inventions, science - and experiments.
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  The Wave Singer - Greg Michaelson - Paperback
  More than a fantastical story of youth's journey to self-knowledge, 'The Wave Singer' is a captivating and challenging allegory for growing up in a harsh world of deceptive options.