2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize Finalists Announced

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The 2010 Dayton Literary Peace PrizeFinalists have been announced.  The prize awards $10,000 cash to its winners–one fiction, one nonfiction–“whose work uses the power of literature to foster peace, social justice, and global understanding.”  Finalists for the 2010 prize include:

The Book of Night Women by Marlon James (Penguin Group; G. P. Putham’s Sons/Riverhead Books): Born into slavery on a Jamaican sugar plantation at the end of the eighteenth century, a woman with dark, mysterious powers finds herself at the heart of a slave revolt plotted by the women around her.

That Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Knopf): Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie turns her penetrating eye on both her native country and America in twelve dazzling stories that explore the collision of two cultures and the deeply human struggle to reconcile them.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s): The meticulously researched story of a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four who chose to stay in New Orleans through Hurricane Katrina and protect his house and business–but then abruptly disappeared.

The Dayton Literary Peace Prize, inaugurated in 2006, is the first and only annual U.S. literary award recognizing the power of the written word to promote peace. The Dayton Literary Peace Prize invites nominations in adult fiction and nonfiction books published within the past year that have led readers to a better understanding of other cultures, peoples, religions, and political points of view.

There is a complete list of the finalists on the Dayton Literary Peace Prize website.

I was pleasantly surprised to see last year’s Fiction award went to Richard Bausch for his short novel Peace, a wonderful book about war and the people who fight wars, not the ones who start them, that I think has not gotten the attention it deserves since its publication.  It will be interesting to see who wins this year, with some great books up for the award.

Source: Dayton Literary Peace Prize

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