Dame Beryl Margaret Bainbridge was an English writer. She was primarily known for her works of psychological fiction, often macabre tales set among the English working class. She won the Whitbread Awards prize for best novel in 1977 and 1996, and was nominated five times for the Booker Prize. She was described in 2007 as a national treasure. In 2008, The Times named Bainbridge on their list of the "50 greatest British writers since 1945".
The Blind Assassin is a novel by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart in 2000. The book is set in the fictional Ontario town of Port Ticonderoga and in Toronto. It is narrated from the present day, referring to previous events that span the twentieth century but mostly the 1930s and 1940s. It is a work of historical fiction with the major events of Canadian history forming an important backdrop, for example, the On-to-Ottawa Trek and a 1934 Communist rally at Maple Leaf Gardens. Greater verisimilitude is given by a series of newspaper articles commenting on events and on the novel's characters from a distance.
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda is a 1998 non-fiction book by The New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch about the 1994 Rwandan genocide, in which an estimated 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutus were killed.
True History of the Kelly Gang is a novel by Australian writer Peter Carey, based loosely on the history of the Kelly Gang. It was first published in Brisbane by the University of Queensland Press in 2000. It won the 2001 Booker Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize in the same year. Despite its title, the book is fiction and a variation on the Ned Kelly story.
Nina Mary Bawden CBE, FRSL, JP was an English novelist and children's writer. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1987 and the Lost Man Booker Prize in 2010. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.
Shirley Hazzard was an Australian-American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She was born in Australia and also held U.S. citizenship.
Everything Is Illuminated is the first novel by the American writer Jonathan Safran Foer, published in 2002. It was adapted into a film of the same name starring Elijah Wood and Eugene Hütz in 2005.
Atonement is a 2001 British metafictional novel written by Ian McEwan. Set in three time periods, 1935 England, Second World War England and France, and present-day England, it covers an upper-class girl's half-innocent mistake that ruins lives, her adulthood in the shadow of that mistake, and a reflection on the nature of writing.
Monica Ali is a British writer of Bangladeshi and English descent. In 2003, she was selected as one of the "Best of Young British Novelists" by Granta based on her unpublished manuscript; her debut novel, Brick Lane, was published later that year. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. It was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name. She has also published four other novels. Her fifth novel, Love Marriage, was published by Virago Press in February 2022 and became an instant Sunday Times bestseller.
The Last Samurai (2000) is the first novel by American writer Helen DeWitt. It follows a single mother and her young son, a child prodigy, who embarks on a quest to find his father. Despite selling well and garnering critical acclaim on publication, it was out of print for almost a decade; when reissued in 2016, it received renewed praise and accolades.
The Story of Lucy Gault is a novel written by William Trevor in 2002. The book is divided into three sections: the childhood, middle age and older times of the girl, Lucy. The story takes place in Ireland during the transition to the 21st century. It follows the protagonist Lucy and her immediate contacts. The book was shortlisted for the Booker and Whitbread Prizes in 2002.
The Time of Our Singing (2003) is a novel by American writer Richard Powers. It tells the story of two brothers, Jonah and Joseph Strom, who are involved in music, dealing heavily with issues of prejudice. Their parents, David Strom and Delia Daley, met at Marian Anderson's concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after she had been barred from any other legitimate concert venue. The story goes back and forth between the generations, describing the unusual coupling of a German-Jewish physicist (David) who has lost his family in the Holocaust and a black woman from Philadelphia (Delia), both of whom have strong musical backgrounds. They impart their love of music to their family. Their two boys study music and become professional musicians: one a singer, the other a pianist. The parent's third child, their daughter Ruth, becomes a militant black activist.
Unless is the final novel by Canadian writer Carol Shields, first published by Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins in 2002. Semi-autobiographical, it was the capstone to Shields's writing career: she died shortly after its publication in 2003. The work was widely acclaimed and nominated for the Booker Prize, the Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award, the Orange Prize for Fiction, and received the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. In 2011, it was a finalist in the Canada Reads competition, where it was defended by actor Lorne Cardinal. Like many of her works, Unless explores the extraordinary that lies within the ordinary lives of ordinary women.
Michelle de Kretser is an Australian novelist who was born in Sri Lanka, and moved to Australia in 1972 when she was 14.
Shena Mackay FRSL is a Scottish novelist born in Edinburgh. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1996 for The Orchard on Fire, and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2003 for Heligoland.
The Lost Man Booker Prize was a special edition of the Man Booker Prize awarded by a public vote in 2010 to a novel from 1970 as the books published in 1970 were not eligible for the Man Booker Prize due to a rules alteration; until 1970 the prize was awarded to books published in the previous year, while from 1971 onwards it was awarded to books published the same year as the award. The prize was won by J. G. Farrell for Troubles.
Maria Joan Hyland is an ex-lawyer and the author of three novels: How the Light Gets In (2004), Carry Me Down (2006) and This is How (2009). Hyland is a lecturer in creative writing in the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. Carry Me Down (2006) was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Hawthornden Prize and the Encore Prize.
The Impressionist is Hari Kunzru's debut novel, first published in 2003. Kunzru received the Betty Trask Award and the Somerset Maugham Award for the book's publication.
Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living is a 2005 novel by Australian author Carrie Tiffany. It won the 2005 Western Australian Premier's Book Award for Fiction, and was shortlisted for the 2006 Miles Franklin Award and the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction.
Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination is a book by British writer Robert Macfarlane published in 2003 about the history of human fascination with mountains. The book takes its title from a line by the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins and combines history with first-person narrative. He considers why people are drawn to mountains despite their obvious dangers, and examines the powerful, and sometimes fatal, hold that mountains can come to have over the imagination. The book's heroes include the mountaineer George Mallory, and its influences include the writing of Simon Schama and Francis Spufford. In the end, Macfarlane criticizes Mallory for devoting more time to the mountain than his wife and notes that he has personally sworn off high-risk mountaineering. The New York Times's John Rothchild praised the book, writing "There's fascinating stuff here, and a clever premise, but Mountains of the Mind may cause recovering climbaholics to trace their addiction to their early homework assignments and file class-action lawsuits against their poetry teachers."
