Owen Sheers' The Dust Diaries shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize

Press Release

This is the second year of the prize that singles out a work of literature - fiction, non-fiction and now, for the first time, poetry - that has a profound sense of the spirit of a place.

This year's judges - Victoria Glendinning (chair), with U.A. Fanthorpe and John Lanchester - read more than sixty books:

their presence has been a challenge, a threat and a delight ... we would never in the usual way have come across books about whisky, computing, fell-walking, Siberia, Wales, "the little victories of life over death". ... it has been a privilege and a pleasure to read such an energisingly diverse range of books.

There is a shortlist of six for the £10,000 Royal Society of Literature Ondaajte Prize:

The Dust Diaries by Owen Sheers (Faber)

The poet Owen Sheers - in prose but not prosaically - traces the footsteps of an ancestor, a most unusual missionary in what was then Rhodesia, his research illuminated by his own experiences in today's Zimbabwe.

Sheers has a fine sense of style, which one expects of a poet; this is a very committed account of the pursuit of his ancestor.

A poet's mix of biography and fiction and travel writing which convincingly and involvingly spans an entire century of Zimbabwean history.

Owen Sheers was born in Fiji in 1974 but brought up from the age of two in Abergavenny in South Wales. He read English at Oxford, where he also captained the University's Modern Pentathlon team and, having completed an M.A. in creative writing at U.E.A, he worked as a researcher and assistant producer on "The Big Breakfast". After winning an Eric Gregory award from the Society of Authors in 1999 he travelled in Zimbabwe researching The Dust Diaries. He won the Vogue Talent Contest for young writers and is the author of a collection of poetry, The Blue Book (Seren, 2000, 4th edition 2003) which was shortlisted for the Welsh Book of the Year and Forward Prize Best First Collection.

In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs by Christopher de Bellaigue (HarperCollins)

The author draws the reader irresistibly into the psychology of Iran, in a punchy narrative which seamlessly meshes personal encounters with political analysis.

This author casts light on a dark subject in a very elegant and persuasive way, writing as both outsider and insider.

Christopher de Bellaigue's book about Iran is educative, empathetic, and timely.

A Blade of Grass by Lewis Desoto (The Maia Press)

Lewis Desoto's powerful first novel perfectly embodies this prize's focus on books with a strong sense of place; it depicts the South African countryside so vividly you can almost smell it.

A novel essentially embedded in its setting which poignantly brings alive both the profound affection and the conflict between an Afrikaaner farmer's wife and her black servant at a time of violence and terror.

Brilliant on the atmosphere of a particular part of Africa, and with much tender psychological insight into the states of mind of two very different women.

A Death in Brazil by Peter Robb (Bloomsbury)

This is memoir-history-travelogue-reportage, with a keen sense of storytelling and a weight of felt, lived experience.

This book constitutes a total immersion in the baroque past and extraordinary actuality of a complex territory which the author knows intimately and from the inside.

A notable stylist, who obviously knows his subject inside out, from soap operas to politicians, and who gives a coherent picture of an unfamiliar country.

Dining on Stones by Iain Sinclair (Hamish Hamilton)

A characteristically surreal and picaresque account of a writer with a quest which takes him from Hackney into the badlands along the purlieus of the A13, in strange and sometimes ghostly company.

An altogether extraordinary writer whose every sentence assaults and delights.

This book shows both the intensity of his fiction and his willingness to think hard about landscapes that the culture at large tries to ignore.

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart (Picador)

Rory Stewart is an obsessional traveller, and in this book he tells the astonishing story of how in 2002 he walked alone across war-ravaged Afghanistan, vividly recording conversations, cultures, and the mortal danger in which he often found himself.

A book dealing with unselfconscious heroism; Stewart has done his homework, speaks the necessary languages, walks through dangerous country, and offers a good deal of esoteric information in a modest way.

A remarkable book about a remarkable journey, in the best tradition of half-mad Britons doing extraordinary feats in central Asia.

The winner of this year's Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize will be announced at an award dinner on Monday, 16th May at the Travellers Club.

Sir Christopher Ondaatje, who endowed the prize, will present the £10,000 award to the winner.



LitNet: 11 May 2005

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