TOKYO | Fri Jan 18, 2013 9:29am EST

TOKYO (Reuters) - A Vancouver neighborhood of men who drink fig-infused martinis and eat fiddleheads on skewers faces a crisis when a beer-swilling, barbecue-loving truck driver moves in. An Olympic mascot marmot kidnaps a young boy from his parents.

These are just a few of the tales in "Better Living Through Plastic Explosives," a book of short stories by Canadian author Zsuzsi Gartner that brings to life a dark, satiric Vancouver set just a few years into the future.

"I would say it is a portrait of Vancouver, my Vancouver," said Gartner, who was short-listed for Canada's Giller Prize for the collection, published recently in the United States. "I've created my own kind of mythology, set in the near future, of how I view the city itself.

"I map different psychic and demographic spaces, but telling the stories I like to tell, which are dark satire."

In one, "The Adopted Chinese Daughters' Rebellion," Canadian parents push adopted offspring into Buddhism and feng shui, while the girls just want to be Canadian. "Once, We Were Swedes" features IKEA product names as a loving, erotic language.

Typical in many ways is "The Summer of the Flesh Eater," the tale of a cultural collision between the vegan locavores of one particular Vancouver cul-de-sac and the truck-driving carnivore who arrives in their midst, serving up huge slabs of meat he describes as "bodacious."

Like many of her tales, Gartner said, it began with a concept - the idea of the difficulty of being a man in the 21st century, combined with the idea of evolution and Darwin's theories, part of another project.

"Then the idea of devolution instead of evolution, what if we started devolving instead of evolving?" she said.

"Those things I was interested in came together and I found a narrative for them. Here's a cosy little setup, a classic story scenario - you know, 'At the Door Knocks a Stranger.' Equilibrium is disturbed. The out of towner, the lost brother, the guy who doesn't fit in."

The story also shares with several others in the book its location on a cul-de-sac, which Gartner said is her equivalent of Agatha Christie's isolated house or train on which all of the action takes place.

"The demographics of Vancouver are important if you're trying to understand the book... It's the fabric of what goes on here," she said. "When you isolate a microcosm of a population on a cul-de-sac and put a microscope on them, you have a bit of a petri dish."

As a satirist, though, she said she has run into difficulties, noting that some of the unreal or otherworldly things she has written have come true, such as reality TV.

"The world has become so self-satirizing. You open the paper or go online, and it's really hard to satirize a world - not just a society but a world - that's become so self-satirizing," she said.

"So I push things slightly into the future. I thought that if I project it three to five years ahead, and make up stuff that's a little otherworldly, then I can keep one step ahead of things."

(Reporting by Elaine Lies, editing by Paul Casciato)

View the original article here

Author Hilary Mantel poses with her book ''Wolf Hall'' after winning the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction at the Guildhall in London October 6, 2009.

LONDON | Fri Oct 12, 2012 7:56am EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - Hilary Mantel could become the first woman to win the coveted Man Booker Prize for fiction twice with her historical novel "Bring Up the Bodies", the bookmakers' favorite alongside Will Self's "Umbrella".

The annual literary award to an author from the Commonwealth, Zimbabwe or Ireland will be handed out at a glitzy dinner in London on Tuesday, and the build-up this year has been dominated by 60-year-old Mantel.

She won the Booker in 2009 with "Wolf Hall", her acclaimed 650-page historical novel charting Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in King Henry VIII's court, and is in contention again for the sequel.

Were she to win, she would become not only the first female the "do the double" but also the first British writer. South Africa-born J.M. Coetzee and Australian Peter Carey have won the prize twice.

"There has been discussion, I know, about the pros and cons of Mantel advancing so far in the prize again so soon," said Peter Stothard, chair of the Man Booker judging panel and editor of the Times Literary Supplement.

"The judges noted Mantel's even greater mastery of method now," he added.

Mantel could be back in the frame yet again in 2015, when the third and final installment of her Cromwell trilogy, "The Mirror and the Light", is due to hit the shelves.

"MOVING AND DRAINING"

The author has admitted that despite the trilogy's critical and commercial success so far, much was still riding on the final chapter of a 10-year writing odyssey.

"If I get the third book right then in a sense my whole life will have come right," she told Reuters in June. "But if I don't, then I am going to see it as a failure. In my mind it is all one long project."

Self's Umbrella was described by Stothard as "both moving and draining", a reference to some 400 pages without paragraph breaks or chapter divisions.

But he added that the tale about a misdiagnosed woman in a north London mental hospital would prove "much less difficult than at first it seems" to those who stuck with it.

Mantel and Self have taken turns at the top of bookmakers' betting lists.

Mantel edged out Self in odds offered by Paddy Power on Thursday with Bring Up the Bodies at 6/4 after leap-frogging Umbrella at 9/4.

But on Friday, Ladbrokes said Self had attracted a series of bets in the last two days making him 2/1 "hot" favorite ahead of Mantel at 5/2.

The other four shortlisted writers are Deborah Levy ("Swimming Home"), Malaysia's Tan Twan Eng ("The Garden of Evening Mists") and first-time novelists Alison Moore ("The Lighthouse") and Indian author Jeet Thayil ("Narcopolis").

The winner of the Man Booker Prize receives a cheque for 50,000 pounds ($80,000), international literary kudos and, perhaps most importantly, a significant spike in sales.

Research by the Guardian newspaper showed that Mantel's Wolf Hall, for example, sold 35,900 copies before the award was announced and nearly 600,000 afterwards.

The year before, Aravind Adiga's "The White Tiger" had sold just 5,703 copies before it won the Booker, rising nearly a hundredfold to 551,061 afterwards.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Steve Addison)

View the original article here

Japanese writer Haruki Murakami speaks during a ceremony where he was awarded the ''XXIII Premi Internacional Catalunya'' prize in Barcelona, June 9, 2011.

STOCKHOLM | Fri Oct 5, 2012 10:12pm EDT

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - A Japanese author who writes of love and isolation, researchers into "spooky" quantum physics and experts on economic inequality have all been tipped as possible Nobel Prize-winners ahead of the start to the annual awards on Monday.

Medicine, physics and chemistry laureates will receive their Nobels first in Stockholm next week, followed later by economics. But for many outside the world of science, the literature and peace prizes are the most widely discussed at the dinner table.

Odds at British bookmaker Ladbrokes and Sweden's Unibet put Japanese author Haruki Murakami and Chinese writer Mo Yan in the top two places for the literature prize. An American advocate of non-violent struggle and a Coptic Christian who runs a children's mission in Egypt are favored for the peace prize.

Murakami is very popular in Japan, but has also become well known abroad for his works which deal with isolation and love and bring the surreal into everyday life. Mo's works are rooted in his native China, its history and people.

Other literary names bandied about include Ireland's William Trevor, Syrian poet Adonis, South Korean poet Ko Un, U.S. novelist Philip Roth and singer/songwriter Bob Dylan.

Culture columnist Maria Schottenius of Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter said that despite the odds, the choice of the Nobel committee was always unpredictable.

"Last year we had a poet, now it could be a storyteller like Philip Roth," Schottenius said. Swedish poet Thomas Transtromer won the prize in 2011.

For the peace prize, betting agencies favour Gene Sharp, an American advocate of non-violent struggle and Maggie Gobran, a Coptic Christian who runs a children's mission in Egypt, but there is no clear candidate.

TELEPORTATION

Researchers who wrote the rulebook for quantum teleportation, described as "spooky" by Albert Einstein, are among the 2012 Thomson Reuters tips for science.

Research into the inner workings of the cell could be in line for the medicine prize, according to Nobel prediction expert David Pendlebury. His annual forecasts are based on the company's "Web of Knowledge" data on how often a scientist's published papers are cited as a basis for further investigation.

For economics, Thomson Reuters has predicted U.S. and British experts on pricing financial assets, how to measure inequality or how to understand market volatility, as possible winners.

In chemistry, Akira Fujishima at Tokyo University of Science, could be in the running for discoveries of new uses for titanium dioxide, long used mainly as an ingredient for paint.

Though their prestige remains undiminished, the cash element for the annual prizes created in dynamite tycoon Alfred Nobel's will to recognize achievements in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and peace -- economics was added in the 1960s at the behest of the Swedish central bank -- have been cut by 20 percent to 8 million crowns ($1.20 million).

The Nobel Foundation which oversees the wealth left by the businessman said it was worried about future returns and that it had been hit by overspending in previous years' prize seasons.

The deliberations on all the prizes are wrapped in secrecy. For literature, the 18 members of the Swedish Academy who award the Nobel prize for literature, are only allowed to discuss the prize within the walls of the Academy itself.

It is extremely rare for the name of any winner to leak out, though 2010 was an exception when newspaper Svenska Dagbladet got a tip that test tube baby pioneer Robert Edwards had won.

The prize for medicine will begin the Nobel season on Monday, followed by physics and chemistry over the next two days. The literature prize will likely be handed out on Thursday October 11 or 18th, while the peace prize will be awarded in Oslo on Friday October 12th and the prize for economics on October 15th.

($1 = 6.6889 Swedish crowns)

(Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Paul Casciato)

View the original article here

Writer Gore Vidal is pictured at the ''2005 Literary Awards'' hosted by PEN USA in Los Angeles in this November 9, 2005 file photo.

NEW YORK/LONDON | Wed Aug 1, 2012 3:00pm EDT

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - The death of author Gore Vidal at the age of 86 brought tributes from around the globe on Wednesday, as friends and fans mourned the passing of the man remembered as one of America's literary giants.

Vidal, whose biting observations on politics, sex and American culture in novels, plays and essays made him one of the best-known authors of his generation, died at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday of complications from pneumonia.

"Gore Vidal was the last surviving giant of a postwar crop of American literary giants," said Gerald Howard, the executive editor and vice president at Doubleday, and Gore's editor for more than a decade.

"He was also that rare American writer who spoke not just to his countrymen but to the entire world, which listened closely to what he had to say."

Howard praised Vidal's many achievements and remembered his dashing persona.

"He can't be replaced and he most certainly will be missed. The world just became a duller place," he added.

Michael Coffey, the editorial co-director of the trade magazine Publisher's Weekly, described Vidal as a prolific writer and an entertaining and rollicking storyteller.

"Despite all that productivity he was able to step outside and into the public arena and comment on politics and culture in a very lucid and entertaining way," Coffey said in an interview.

One of the joys of Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter's career was publishing Vidal's writings in the magazine.

"Whether you agreed with him or not, you always had to concede that he got his point across with the utmost elegance," Carter said.

A MAN OF MANY TALENTS

Vidal, born in West Point, New York, began writing as a 19-year-old soldier stationed in Alaska, where his World War Two experiences provided material for his first work, "Williwaw".

But it was his third novel, "The City and the Pillar," which openly featured one of the first homosexual protagonists, that created a sensation in 1948.

A series of historical novels -- "Burr," "1876," "Lincoln" and "The Golden Age" among them -- as well as the campy transsexual comedy "Myra Breckinridge" also form Vidal's legacy in a publishing career spanning over six decades.

For Jeffrey Richards, producer of a revival of Vidal's "The Best Man" currently on Broadway, Vidal was simply "an original."

"He wrote novels, essays, plays, teleplays and films with grace, distinction, style, wit and wisdom. Not to mention that he was a master raconteur, an accomplished actor, a brilliant gadfly and an impishly gifted impersonator," he said.

"For his contribution to American culture, we will always be in his debt."

Michael Kammen, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor emeritus of American History and Culture at Cornell University, said Vidal was "a brilliant intellect, a superb stylist, and a fabulous gossip."

"He was a great controversialist, doing battle on television panel shows with conservatives. He described and explained American political culture past and present and illuminated what we thought we knew, or areas that we had forgotten. He had the most inquiring mind you can imagine and he dared to be outspoken. He will be missed," he said.

LITERARY FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

Vidal, a self-described "gentleman bitch," was just as well known for his caustic comments outside the covers of his books.

He considered Ernest Hemingway a joke and compared Truman Capote to a "filthy animal that has found its way into the house."

His most famous literary enemies were Norman Mailer and conservative pundit William F. Buckley Jr.

Mailer, whom Vidal once likened to cult killer Charles Manson, head-butted Vidal before a TV appearance.

"Gore Vidal dreaded the idea of an afterlife, because it would mean he'd have to see Norman Mailer again. Rest In Peace," said comedian Frank Conniff on the social messaging service Twitter, where tributes to Vidal mainly took the form of quotations from the writer.

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and rock singer Courtney Love were among the many celebrities who posted their favorite sayings.

"'Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn.' quoted by Gore Vidal ... you will be missed, rest in peace Gore," said Love in a Twitter message.

Moore chose: "Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for president. One hopes it is the same half." This quotation was also tweeted by the British Internet entrepreneur Martha Lane Fox.

British writer Owen Jones, who penned the book "Chavs" about British social class, picked a Vidal quote about friendship and death: "'Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies'. RIP Gore Vidal, a great intellectual of our time. No-one did acerbic better."

(Editing by Will Dunham, Gary Hill)

View the original article here