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Colin McAdam and Kim Echlin Short-Listed For The 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize For Fiction

October 7, 2009 – Toronto – The first two Canadian authors published under Penguin Canada’s new Hamish Hamilton Canada literary imprint have been short-listed for Canada’s prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction.

The news was announced yesterday at a press conference at the Four Seasons Hotel 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 DISAPPEARED by Kim Echlin is an unforgettable story of love and loss set against the haunting backdrop of Cambodia’s savage killing fields. Released in Canada in March 2009, rights to the novel have sold in 17 countries and its release coincided with the long-awaited UN-backed trial of a former Khmer Rouge leader in Cambodia at a Phnom Penh court, 30 years after the murderous regime fell.

Jury Citation:
The Disappeared is an elegiac, beautifully told memory-tale of obsessive love. A teenaged Canadian woman falls in love with a young Cambodian refugee; after the fall of Pol Pot, her lover abandons her and returns home in search of his lost family. She follows him to Cambodia and takes the reader with her into one of the darkest chapters of 20th century history. On one level, the novel is a young Canadian woman’s bildungsroman; on another, a profoundly moving account of the genocidal horrors of the Cambodian killing fields and its terrible aftermath. Written in elegant, spare prose, The Disappeared confronts one of the most painful conflicts of our time; the collision between our private, personal desires and the brutal, dehumanizing facts of modern history.”

FALL is the second novel by Colin McAdam, whose debut novel Some Great Thing won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK.  

Jury citation:
“The novel is set, unusually, in an exclusive boarding-school for the kids of Canada's elite and of foreign high-flyers, notably Julius, the American ambassador's confident son. There are a few girls in the school, one of them utterly beautiful and irresistible. The narrative is shared between Julius and his roommate Noel – less privileged, less attractive, a clever but confused loner. 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.”    

Launched in March 2009, the Hamish Hamilton Canada imprint is the first literary imprint to be launched in Canada in over fifteen years, with an inaugural list that includes Kim Echlin and Colin McAdam, publishing sensation Reif Larsen, 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Joseph Boyden and international award winners Ali Smith, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith and Philip Roth.

Hamish Hamilton Canada is a boutique publishing imprint with a deep commitment to literary value, embracing both young and old, the experimental and the new, selectively publishing only nine novels each year. Nicole Winstanley, Executive Editor for the imprint, in the course of a single year, has signed novels by David Cronenberg, Vikram Seth, the late Roberto Bolaño and Man Asian Literary Prize winner Miguel Syjuco to the imprint. Syjuco’s debut novel Ilustrado, now sold in 16 countries, will be published in May 2010.

“Hamish Hamilton Canada upholds the storied traditions of one of the world’s most distinguished imprints,” said David Davidar, President and Publisher of Penguin Group (Canada). “We now have the honour of counting two Giller Prize finalists among our first three titles published. Both these novels are outstanding literary works. Our  congratulations to both Kim and Colin.” 

Founded in 1974 as a distribution company for Penguin books from all over the world, Penguin Group (Canada) began publishing Canadian and international titles in 1977 and quickly became known as one of Canada's pre-eminent publishers of literary, thought-provoking fiction and non-fiction. Penguin is the proud publisher of Author of the Year and 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Joseph Boyden.

Penguin Group (www.penguin.com), celebrating its 75th birthday in 2010, is one of the world’s largest English-language trade book publishers, with established divisions and key market positions in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, India, China, South Africa, New Zealand and Ireland.  The Penguin Group is part of Pearson plc, the international media company.

Find out more at www.penguin.ca

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