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The Help, Audible.com’s Highest Rated Audio Book Ever, Wins South Africa’s Exclusive Books’ 2009 Boeke Prize
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (Amy Einhorn Books/ G. P. Putnam’s Sons) is now the highest rated audio book ever sold by Audible.com, one of the largest distributors of downloadable audio books. The 4.89 star rating is based on 2,013 consumer ratings (a majority being 5 stars, with the overall number of reviews/ratings increasing daily) of the Penguin Audio edition of The Help, narrated by Cassandra Campbell, Jenna Lamia, Octavia Spencer and Bahni Turpin.
The Help’s ever-growing success, with nearly 740,000 copies in print and the still the longest-running New York Times bestseller currently on the hardcover fiction list, now at #5 in its 27th week, continues to extend to other parts of the world.
This week, The Help won Exclusive Books’ 2009 Boeke Prize in South Africa. The Boeke Prize is a South African book award, modeled after the UK's Man Booker Prize and sponsored by Exclusive Books, South Africa’s largest retail book chain. Although “boeke” is the plural of “book” in the Afrikaans language, the Boeke Prize has only been awarded to novels written in English. The competition was launched in 1995 and 11 of the 14 winners have been debut novels, including The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead), which was a co-winner in 2004. The books are judged by a panel of book critics based in South Arica.
(L-R) Alison Lowry (Penguin South Africa CEO), Barry Ronge (Radio Presenter/Writer/Boeke Judge) and Batya Green (Exclusive Books) are pictured at the 2009 Boeke Prize ceremony.
Read an excerpt from The Help, view the reading group guide, and listen to a podcast with Kathryn Stockett.
Viking/Penguin’s Ceridwen Dovey is Among the National Book Foundation's 2009 “5 under 35” Honorees
Ceridwen Dovey, author of Blood Kin (Viking/Penguin), has been selected by 2008 National Book Award Fiction Finalist Rachel Kushner for the National Book Foundation’s fourth annual “5 Under 35” Honor, which recognizes and celebrates the next generation of fiction writers, as determined by past National Book Award winners and finalists. Last year’s distinguished quartet included Viking/Penguin author Keith Gessen (All the Sad Young Literary Men).
The “5 Under 35” event will be held this year on Monday, November 16 at the Powerhouse Arena in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, where Ceridwen and the four other 2009 honorees will read their works. She will also be a guest at all National Book Awards week events, which includes the finalists reception and reading on Tuesday, November 17th, and Awards dinner on the 18th. To read more about the award, click here.
Ceridwen Dovey is an anthropologist who grew up in South Africa and Australia. Blood Kin, which won South Africa's most prestigious literary award (the Sunday Times Fiction Prize), was also shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Australia-Asia Literary Award, and longlisted for the Prix Femina Etranger.
Listen to her Penguin podcast and read her guest blogging on the Penguin website.
Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth is #2 on The Times (London) Best 60 Books of the Past 60 Years List, which also Includes 10 Other PGI Titles
The Times (London) recently conducted a “NovelLit” Readers Poll and just published the results, ranking the Best 60 Books of the Past 60 Years, with #1 bestselling author Ken Follett’s The Pillars of Earth (Dutton/ NAL) ranking #2. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (Plume) is #6, and nine other PGI titles are listed: Lord of the Flies by William Golding (Perigee), World Without End by Ken Follett (Dutton/NAL), A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini (Riverhead), On the Road by Jack Kerouac (Viking/Penguin), Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee (Viking/Penguin), The Godfather by Mario Puzo (Signet/NAL), The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Penguin), Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Penguin) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (Penguin).
To view The Times article and complete list, click here.
Penguin Author Fred Vargas wins the International Dagger Prize
Penguin Paperback Mystery author Fred Vargas has been selected as winner of the CWA Duncan Lawrie International Dagger Prize for The Chalk Circle Man.
Fred Vargas’s Commissaire Adamsberg mysteries are #1 bestsellers in France, and they are quickly becoming an international sensation. The Chalk Circle Man is the debut mystery in the internationally bestselling series. The gripping mystery introduces readers to the recently appointed Commissionaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, an intuitive, eccentric but undeniably brilliant man who is sure to change the way business is done in Paris’s 5th arrondissement.
For more information on the award, click here.
Click here to see all three Penguin titles written by Fred Vargas.
Riverhead’s Colin McAdam Shortlisted for Canada’s 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize for Fiction
Riverhead author Colin McAdam, who is also published by Penguin Canada’s Hamish Hamilton imprint, has been shortlisted for the prestigious 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize, for his novel, Fall.
The news was announced this week at a press conference in Toronto. The five finalists were selected by an esteemed jury panel made up of celebrated American novelist and short story writer Russell Banks, acclaimed UK author and journalist Victoria Glendinning, and distinguished professor and award-winning author Alistair MacLeod. The shortlist was chosen from 96 books submitted for consideration, by 39 publishing houses from every region of the country.
The jury had high praise for Fall: “The traditional setting is offset by a sharp, modern immediacy of style and form, and by the author's brilliantly authentic insight into adolescent sexuality and its heartbreaking delusions, dreams and betrayals. This is a strikingly well-achieved novel.”
