To celebrate the longlist (see image above) the books are being reviewed on book blogs and social media. To follow along search #SUDTP26
Worth £20,000, this global accolade recognises exceptional literary talent aged 39 or under, celebrating the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer Dylan Thomas and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. The prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today, nurture the talents of tomorrow, and celebrate international literary excellence.
With an average age of 32, and comprising seven novels, three poetry collections, and two short story collections, the longlist is:
– Harriet Armstrong, To Rest Our Minds and Bodies (Les Fugitives) – novel
– Isabelle Baafi, Chaotic Good (Faber) – poetry
– Colwill Brown, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh (Chatto & Windus, Vintage) – novel
– Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Joy Is My Middle Name (Fitzcarraldo Editions) – poetry
– Suzannah V. Evans, Under the Blue (Bloomsbury Poetry) – poetry
– Seán Hewitt, Open, Heaven (Jonathan Cape, Vintage) – novel
– Kanza Javed, What Remains After a Fire (W.W. Norton & Company) – short stories
– Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo, The Tiny Things Are Heavier (Manilla Press, Bonnier Books) – novel
– Derek Owusu, Borderline Fiction (Canongate) – novel
– Issa Quincy, Absence (Granta) – novel
– Saba Sams, Gunk (Bloomsbury Circus) – novel
– Vanessa Santos, Make a Home of Me (Dead Ink Books) – short stories
I read Gunk by Saba Sams, find my thoughts below ⬇️
From the award-winning author of the smash hit Send Nudes: an electrifying debut exploring love and desire, chaos and control – and family in all its forms
Jules has been divorced from her ex-husband Leon for five years, but she still works alongside him at Gunk, the grotty student nightclub he owns in central Brighton. She spends her nights serving shots and watching, from behind the bar, as Leon flirts with students on the dancefloor. In the early hours of the morning, she paces home to sleep.
But then Leon hires nineteen-year-old Nim to work the bar with Jules – Nim, with her shaved head and steady pour, her disarming sweetness and sudden distance – and Jules finds herself jolted awake. When Nim discovers she’s pregnant, Jules agrees to help. As the months pass, and the relationship between the two women grows increasingly intimate and perplexing, it emerges that Nim has her own unexpected gifts to give.
Now, alone in her small flat, Jules is holding a baby, just twenty-four-hours old, who still smells of Nim. But no one knows where Nim is, or if she’s coming back. What could the future – for Jules, Nim, and this unnamed baby – possibly look like?
Raw, exhilarating, tender and wise, Gunk is an electrifying debut novel exploring love and desire, safety and destruction, chaos and control – and family in all its forms.
My thoughts: Jules has been divorced for five years but still works in her husband’s student filled night club Gunk. When he hires Nim to work behind the bar, she and Jules become friends, and possibly more as Jules finds herself drawn to Nim.
When Nim finds she’s pregnant, she offers the baby to Jules, who has wanted to be a mother, but never managed to get pregnant. Nim moves in with her, and the two women share her flat while waiting for the baby to arrive.
Neither knows how the birth will change things, whether Nim will stay or how they will cope. Can their relationship, whatever that might be, survive the changes coming?
Jules is a complicated character, she’s basically stuck in a rut in her life, still in the same job, still looking after her ex-husband, not having started a new relationship or really moved on in her life in a long time. Nim’s arrival shakes things up, although there’s a big age difference and Nim doesn’t talk about her life before.
The relationship between them is quite strange, they share a bed as there’s only one in the flat, Jules is a caretaker, she wants to look after Nim, even though Nim finds it too much.
It’s an interesting book, even if I never felt I really knew the characters, even Jules, the narrator, her habit of being arms length with her family felt like she was written to keep the reader at a distance too.
The longlisted titles will now be whittled down to a six strong shortlist by an impressive panel of judges chaired by Irenosen Okojie MBE, award-winning Nigerian British author of Curandera, Butterfly Fish, Speak Gigantular and Nudibranch, and former Women’s Prize for Fiction judge, who is joined by: Joe Dunthorne, award-winningSwansea-bornpoet and novelist; Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, poet, pacifist and fabulist; Prajwal Parajuly, multi-award nominatedauthor of The Gurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee; Eley Williams, acclaimedauthor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Last year’s prize was awarded to Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher for her novel The Coin, and previous winners include Caleb Azumah Nelson, Arinze Ifeakandu, Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter, Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Fiona McFarlane, and Kayo Chingonyi.
The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist will be unveiled on Thursday 19 March, followed by a shortlist celebration event in London (13 May), with the winner revealed on International Dylan Thomas Day (14 May) at an evening ceremony in Swansea.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 