17th June 2010

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2010
Winner announced 7.30pm, Thursday 17th June

The Twin, a debut novel by Dutch author Gerbrand Bakker, has won the 2010 International IMPAC DUBLIN Literary Award. The Award is organized by Dublin City Libraries, on behalf of Dublin City Council and sponsored by IMPAC, an international management productivity company. The prize is €100,000. It is the largest prize for a single novel and will be divided between the author and the novel’s translator, David Colmer, who will receive €25,000. Uniquely, the IMPAC DUBLIN receives its nominations from public libraries around the globe.

Read more about The Twin

"Gerbrand Bakker joins a long list of eminent novelists to win this award"  said the Lord Mayor and Patron of the Award, Cllr. Emer Costello, "and having a novel in translation as the winner, means that this beautifully written Dutch novel will come to the attention of readers world-wide, who might otherwise never have come across it.  Dublin City Council and IMPAC are extremely proud that the IMPAC DUBLIN Award has grown into one of the highlights, not only of the Irish, but also of the international literary calendar".

The Twinbeat off competition from 155 other titles, nominated by 163 public libraries from 43 countries.  Translated from the original Dutch by David Colmer, The Twin was first published in English by Harvill Secker, UK in 2008 and in Dutch by Cossee, Amsterdam in 2006. The shortlist of eight novels included novels from the USA, UK, France, Germany and Netherland by Irish author Joseph O’Neill.

About The Twin:

When Helmer’s twin brother dies in a car accident, he is obliged to return to the small family farm. He resigns himself to taking over his brother’s role and spending the rest of his days ‘with his head under a cow’.

After his old, worn-out father has been transferred upstairs, Helmer sets about furnishing the rest of the house according to his own minimal preferences. The Twin is an ode to the platteland, the flat and bleak Dutch countryside with its ditches and its cows and its endless grey skies.

The judging panel, which this year included English author Anne Fine, commented…

Though rich in detail, it’s a sparely written story, with the narrator’s odd small cruelties, laconic humour and surprising tendernesses emerging through a steady, well-paced, unaffected style.
The book convinces from first page to last. With quiet mastery the story draws in the reader. The writing is wonderful: restrained and clear, and studded with detail of farm rhythms in the cold, damp Dutch countryside. The author excels at dialogue, and Helmer’s inner story-telling voice also comes over perfectly as he begins to change everything around him. There are intriguing ambiguities, but no false notes. Nothing and no one is predictable, and yet we believe in them all: the regular tanker driver, the next door neighbour with her two bouncing children, and Jaap, the old farm labourer from the twins’ childhood who comes back to the farm in time for the last great upheaval, as Helmer finally takes charge of what is left of his own life.

For further information: Dublin City Council press office: 086 815 0010 

***************************************************************************
Notes for Editors

The other shortlisted novels were In Zodiac Light by Robert Edric, Home by Marilynne Robinson, Settlement by Christoph Hein, God’s Own Country by Ross Raisin, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barberry, The Believers by Zoe Heller and Netherland by Joseph O’Neill.

The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is presented annually to promote excellence in world literature. It is open to novels written in any language and by authors of any nationality, provided the work has been published in English or English translation in the specified time period as outlined in the rules and conditions for the year. Nominations are submitted by library systems in major cities throughout the world.

The International IMPAC Dublin Award is managed by Dublin City Libraries, on behalf of Dublin City Council. It is sponsored by IMPAC, an international management productivity company.

Previous winners of the prestigious award include:
Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas (2009), De Niro’s Game by Rawi Hage (2008), Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson (2007) and The Master by Colm Tóibín (2006)

For full details of the 2010 award and international judging panel, see: www.impacdublinaward.ie

This year there were five members of the international panel of judges chaired by Hon. Eugene R. Sullivan;

Anne Fine has written eight highly acclaimed novels for adults and is also one of Britain's most prestigious writers for children, having twice won both the Carnegie Medal and the Whitbread Children's Book Award. In 2003 she was awarded an OBE for her contribution to literature. Her work has been translated into thirty five languages. She has two daughters, and lives in County Durham. Her website is www.annefine.co.uk.
Anatoly (Anthony) Kudryavitsky was born in 1954 in Moscow of a Polish father and half-Irish mother. He lives in Co. Dublin and writes in both English and Russian. His poems and short stories have been translated into eleven languages.

Eve Patten is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Trinity College, Dublin, where she specialises in Irish writing and in the nineteenth and twentieth-century novel. She regularly reviews new fiction for the Irish Times and is an essayist for the British Council's Contemporary Writers series (www.contemporarywriters.com). She was awarded Fellowship of Trinity College in 2005, and lives in Dublin with her husband and two children.

Abdourahman Waberi is a major writer from the African nation of Djibouti. An essayist, novelist, teacher, poet and short story writer, Waberi is partially based in France and has been named one of the 50 Writers of the Future by the French literary mag Lire. His latest novel in English, “In the United States of Africa” is a bold and fantastic vision of an Africa never before presented in literature.

Zoë Wicomb is a South African writer. Her critical work focuses on South African writing and culture. Her fiction includes You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town, David's Story, Playing in the Light, short stories in various collections, and her latest novel, The One that Got Away. She is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.

-ENDS-
 
For further information: Dublin City Council Press Office:
Ireland  - 086815 0010
International  ++353 86 815 0010

[News Archive]