Pulitzers, Bookers, Nobels: Prize-Winning Books (ENGL219)
Semester 2 / 2016

Texts

y separately published work icon The Narrow Road to the Deep North Richard Flanagan , Sydney : Random House , 2013 Z1928536 2013 single work novel historical fiction (taught in 5 units)

'A novel of the cruelty of war, and tenuousness of life and the impossibility of love.

'August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.

'This savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.' (Publisher's blurb)

The Goldfinch, Tartt

The Sense of an Ending, Barnes

The English Patient, Ondaatje

A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan

The Complete Maus, Spiegelman

Description

This unit explores books judged to be the best. It focuses on the qualities of books that win literary prizes and the impact the prize system has on the production and reception of literature. We will read primarily British, American, and Australian novels that have won literary prizes, such as the Booker and Pulitzer prizes, the Miles Franklin Award, the Orange Prize for fiction, and works by authors who have won the Nobel Prize for literature. Topics of particular interest include the idea of literary quality, popular versus critical acclaim, and the future of a literary canon, or list of the finest or most important books.

X