Winner of the 2008 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize announced

The Royal Society of Literature is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2008 Ondaatje Prize is Graham Robb for his book The Discovery of France (Picador)

Judges Professor Russell Celyn Jones, Elaine Feinstein and Romesh Gunesekera were delighted by the book:

‘A hugely impressive feat of cultural archaeology by a writer whose gifts resemble those of an imaginative novelist. Part cartography, part biography of a nation, it reveals how tribal and mythical this country (France) actually is.’ — Russell Celyn Jones

‘An elegantly written and continuously intriguing account of the landscape and legends which, in part, explain the histories of the very different regions of France.’ — Elaine Feinstein

‘The book is a remarkable achievement ... the complicated story of a large country told in a voice that earns our trust.’ — Romesh Gunesekera

Graham Robb is a former Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, where he lives, and is the author of biographies of Balzac, Victor Hugo and Rimbaud and Strangers: Homosexual Love in the Nineteenth Century.

Also on the shortlist were five other books ‘that were brave, that had heart, that were written with some passion and published because they should be’.

Nicola Barker’s Darkmans
‘Set in the sort of abstract place that modern England has become ... the book is so forceful and brave in unexpected ways. If ever there is to be a hymn to Ashford, this is it.’

Darkmans, a 21st century ghost story, is Nicola Barker’s seventh novel. She is the prizewinning author of two short story collections, Love Your Enemies and Heading Inland, and won the Impac Award with her fourth novel, Wide Open.

Publisher Fourth Estate/Harper Perennial
Contact Rebecca McEwan (rebecca.mcewan@harpercollins.co.uk / 020 8307 4247)

Robert Carver’s Paradise With Serpents
‘A highly idiosyncratic piece of writing-over of a real landscape, opening up a Paraguay one did not know existed. The author places himself in maximum danger, extending to his readers an anticipatory pleasure, making them wonder if he’ll emerge in one piece.’

A journalist, writer and radio playwright, Robert Carver has taught English in a maximum security gaol in Australia, has worked for the BBC World Service in Eastern Europe and the Levant and is the author of The Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania.

Publisher Harper Perennial
Contact Lizzy Kingston (lizzy.kingston@harpercollins.co.uk / 020 8307 4247)

Orlando Figes’ The Whisperers
‘A majestic and important historical book about the effects of totalitarianism upon the souls of those who live under it, rather than an analysis of the doctrine itself. In every testimony recorded you get the sense of a bleak and desolate world of Russia under Stalin.’

Orlando Figes is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London. In addition to his account of the oppressed in Stalinist Russia he is the author of Peasant Russia, Civil War, A People’s Tragedy and Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia.

Publisher Allen Lane
Contact Sarah Christie (sarah.christie@penguin.co.uk /020 7010 4989)

Rachel Lichtenstein’s On Brick Lane
‘An absorbing personal quest to document, with sympathy and affection, a vanished Jewish community and in the process discover new ones. A book of folklore and of many voices and points of view.’

An artist and writer, co-author, with Iain Sinclair, of Rodinsky’s Room, Rachel Lichtenstein has been working on On Brick Lane for five years. She moved to East London in 1991 and is a guide and lecturer on the Jewish East End.

Publisher Hamish Hamilton
Contact Anna Ridley (anna.ridley@uk.penguingroup.com / 020 7010 3251)

Robert Minhinnick’s Sea Holly
‘An impressive work of literature from a poet whose familiarity with a place, albeit in a state of degeneration, enables him to create the sort of characters who are hard to imagine coming from anywhere else.’

Sea Holly, set in the South Wales seaside town of Porthcawl, is prizewinning poet and essayist Robert Minhinnick’s first novel.

Publisher Seren
Contact Jen Campbell (jencampbell@seren-books.com / 01656 663018)

For further information please contact Paula Johnson at paula@rslit.org or on 0207 845 4676.

Past recipients

2008 Graham Robb The Discovery of France
2007 Hisham Matar In the Country of Men
2006 James Meek The People’s Act of Love
2005 Rory Stewart The Places In Between
2004 Louisa Waugh Hearing Birds Fly