2008 Kiriyama Prize Winners
ForumKiriyama Prize Readers
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1kiriyamaprize
The winners of the 2008 Kiriyama Prize were announced on April 1. New Zealand author Lloyd Jones won the fiction Prize for Mister Pip, set on the island of Bougainville. Diver and environmental journalist Julia Whitty received the award in nonfiction for her paean to the South Pacific, The Fragile Edge. The following is from the Kiriyama Prize press release:
In The Fragile Edge, Julia Whitty takes us under the surface of the South Pacific and shows us "a world that feels purely and extravagantly sensual yet exists mostly outside our own sensory realm." Whitty infects us with her love for this corner of the ocean and warmly introduces us to the tenacious people who live along its delicate shores. She also sounds a clear warning. “Coral reefs are powerful arbiters of life both in the sea and on the land,” Whitty writes. “The oceans they help stock are the chemical engine driving the planet... This water world, and its most fertile and fragile edge, the coral reefs, are the continuing cradle of life on earth.” The Fragile Edge is a paean to the seas that makes us yearn to keep them safe, not only for the wildlife and people who live near or in it, but for us all.
Julia Whitty is an environmental correspondent for Mother Jones magazine and a former documentary filmmaker. Whitty's previous book, a collection of fictional short stories, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip is set on the South Pacific island of Bougainville, during the island's bloody secessionist clash with Papua New Guinea in the 1990's. (Thousands of Bougainvilleans died in the long conflict, which was sparked by disputes over land ownership and environmental damage in connection with a copper mine on the island.) Mister Pip's considerable charm lies with its endearing narrator, a teenage Bougainvillean girl named Matilda. Matilda becomes enthralled with the exotic world in Great Expectations when the only white man left on the island — the kind and enigmatic Mr. Watts — reads the Dickens's classic with the children of her village after all teachers evacuate the island. Jones' language is beautiful, but the story—like the history of the island itself—takes a dark turn as the cruel realities of war make escape through literature alone impossible.
Lloyd Jones is the New Zealand-born author of several critically acclaimed novels and short-story collections. Mister Pip was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
In The Fragile Edge, Julia Whitty takes us under the surface of the South Pacific and shows us "a world that feels purely and extravagantly sensual yet exists mostly outside our own sensory realm." Whitty infects us with her love for this corner of the ocean and warmly introduces us to the tenacious people who live along its delicate shores. She also sounds a clear warning. “Coral reefs are powerful arbiters of life both in the sea and on the land,” Whitty writes. “The oceans they help stock are the chemical engine driving the planet... This water world, and its most fertile and fragile edge, the coral reefs, are the continuing cradle of life on earth.” The Fragile Edge is a paean to the seas that makes us yearn to keep them safe, not only for the wildlife and people who live near or in it, but for us all.
Julia Whitty is an environmental correspondent for Mother Jones magazine and a former documentary filmmaker. Whitty's previous book, a collection of fictional short stories, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award.
Lloyd Jones' Mister Pip is set on the South Pacific island of Bougainville, during the island's bloody secessionist clash with Papua New Guinea in the 1990's. (Thousands of Bougainvilleans died in the long conflict, which was sparked by disputes over land ownership and environmental damage in connection with a copper mine on the island.) Mister Pip's considerable charm lies with its endearing narrator, a teenage Bougainvillean girl named Matilda. Matilda becomes enthralled with the exotic world in Great Expectations when the only white man left on the island — the kind and enigmatic Mr. Watts — reads the Dickens's classic with the children of her village after all teachers evacuate the island. Jones' language is beautiful, but the story—like the history of the island itself—takes a dark turn as the cruel realities of war make escape through literature alone impossible.
Lloyd Jones is the New Zealand-born author of several critically acclaimed novels and short-story collections. Mister Pip was also a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
2rebeccanyc
Thanks for posting this on LT. For future reference, you might be interested to know we have a Prizes Group here on LT that a lot of people read, and where they are more likely to see this kind of announcement. Fortunately, one of the group members saw this announcement and posted a link to it in the Kiriyama Prize thread in the Prizes Group.
