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‘I feel like I’ve won the lottery of lotteries already,’ said Booker-nominated Canadian author Madeleine Thien, seen greeting a fan at the 2016 Vancouver Writers Festival. Thien’s latest novel is also nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the Giller Prize and other honours. (CBC)<\/p><\/div>\n
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Madeleine\u00a0Thien\u00a0is Canada’s newest literary star \u2014 making a splash in Canada and abroad with her novel\u00a0Do Not\u00a0Say We Have\u00a0Nothing \u2014\u00a0<\/em>nabbing\u00a0a high-profile\u00a0trio of nominations for the Man Booker Prize, the Giller Prize\u00a0and the Governor General’s Literary Awards.<\/p>\n The\u00a0three are among the world’s most\u00a0prestigious\u00a0\u2014\u00a0and lucrative\u00a0\u2014 literary honours:\u00a0the Man Booker carries a prize of\u00a0\u00a350,000 (approx\u00a0$80,000 Cdn), the\u00a0Giller\u00a0$100,000 and the\u00a0Governor General’s Literary Award $25,000.\u00a0Thien’s\u00a0also up for the Quebec Writers’ Federation Literary Award.\u00a0Winners typically\u00a0see a huge jump in book sales.<\/p>\n Thien won the Governor General Literary Award for fiction in Canada early Tuesday morning and will learn the Man Booker outcome at a gala taking place in London this evening.<\/p>\n Do Not Say We Have Nothing is Thien’s third novel. (CBC)<\/p><\/div>\n For what it’s worth, the Montreal-based, Vancouver-born author’s acclaimed third novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing<\/em>, is currently the Booker favourite, according to well-known betting agency Ladbrokes.<\/p>\n Some literary critics also favour her for a Booker win.<\/p>\n “Madeleine Thien is very high in the bookie’s odds and has been very high all along,” Claire Armitstead, books editor at the Guardian and Observer, told CBC News.<\/p>\n “I think she’s leading 2 to\u00a01, which is quite surprising because this is a very big book. It’s a testing book.\u00a0It’s about a big hard period of history. And I’m absolutely delighted.”<\/p>\n ‘This book, though it’s very specifically set in China, does what great literature does,\u00a0which is to make the specific universal.’<\/span>– Claire Armitstead, The Guardian<\/em><\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n “Personally, I would love her to win,” said Armitstead.<\/p>\n “She’s a real artist:\u00a0the sort of writer who invests five years of her life in finding out about something in a really big way.”<\/p>\n For Thien,\u00a0who will attend the black-tie Booker gala dinner at London’s Guildhall \u2014 which will be broadcast on the BBC \u2014\u00a0the attention has been a bit overwhelming.<\/p>\n “It’s hard to take it all in. It’s been such an incredible time for the book,” she\u00a0told CBC News last\u00a0Friday,\u00a0ahead of an appearance at the Vancouver Writers Festival.<\/p>\n “I’m really happy for the novel. I’m overjoyed that it’s finding its way to so many readers,” she said.<\/p>\n “I can’t put words to it. Maybe in six months I’ll feel all the complex emotions that, at the moment, are bouncing off me. I feel like I need to go through this and rise to the occasion and do my very best to celebrate everything that’s happened. I feel so lucky.”<\/p>\n Do Not Say We Have Nothing<\/em>\u00a0opens in Vancouver in 1990, as a expatriate Chinese family takes in a young woman who has fled China in the wake of the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.<\/p>\n But much of the novel is set during the time of the Cultural Revolution\u00a0and follows the lives of several musicians whose lives are thrown into tumult from the changes in their country.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ‘I’m really happy for the novel. I’m overjoyed that it’s finding its way to so many readers,’ Thien said. (Babak Salari\/Penguin\/Random House)<\/p><\/div>\n Thien says\u00a0her novel may have resonated so widely with readers and prize\u00a0juries because it deals with themes of displacement\u00a0and refugees fleeing political strife \u2014 issues that are on people’s minds due to the Syrian crisis.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “It harkens back to the cyclical nature of these catastrophes that have forced people to flee their homes or have made it so they cannot live in the ways they wish to live: in freedom, with dignity, in the places they were born and the places they would prefer to stay,” she said.<\/p>\n “It’s\u00a0a catastrophic recurring event that we seem to keep creating.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n If Madeleine Thien wins the Man Booker Prize, ‘it will definitely give her a place in world literature which I think she should have already,’ said Claire Armitstead, books editor of The Guardian newspaper in London. (CBC)<\/p><\/div>\n British book critic\u00a0Armitstead\u00a0agrees with\u00a0Thien’s\u00a0assessment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n “This book, though it’s very specifically set in China, does what great literature does,\u00a0which is to make the specific universal.”<\/p>\n “So what it is about is the struggles of the individual to make their mark on history, to find themselves a place in history, and we are in a period of revolutions, of mass migrations of people where it is becoming harder and harder for individuals to actually have an existence and this is at base what this book is about. And that’s a story for everyone.”<\/p>\n Unfortunately, much of the book’s subject matter is still considered too sensitive in China to allow her novel to be published there, because the government controls which books may be published, said\u00a0Thien.<\/p>\n “But what has been extraordinary is there have been Chinese publishers who are interested in publishing,” she said.<\/p>\n “We all hope at some point in the near future it will be possible.”<\/p>\n If Thien\u00a0does bring home just a few of the literary honours for which she is nominated,\u00a0it could boost her\u00a0chances even there.<\/p>\n CBC-TV will broadcast the Scotiabank Giller Prize Gala on Nov.\u00a07 at 9 p.m.\u00a0ET\u00a0(10 pm AT, 10:30 pm Nfld)<\/em><\/p>\n Source: http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/entertainment\/madeleine-thien-literary-prizes-1.3818805<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Vancouver-born author won Governor Gener … Continue reading \n
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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSet during China’s Cultural Revolution<\/h2>\n
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