The first winner of the Folio prize, created in response to “shortcomings of the Man Booker prize”, was awarded today to the short story collection Tenth of December by George Saunders. Judges, including Lavinia Greenlaw, Michael Chabon, Sarah Hall, Nam Le and Pankaj Mishra, praised the stories as “darkly playful” saying: ” they take us to the edge of some of the most difficult questions of our time and force us to consider what lies behind and beyond them.” The other candidates on the shortlist were Red Doc by Anne Carson; Schroder by Amity Gaige; Benediction by Kent Haruf; The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner; A Girl is a Half-formed thing by Eimear McBride; and A Naked Singularity by Sergio de la Pava. Mr. Saunders recently won the Story Prize, yet another major literary award for this author. Read the entire article here.
Laura
