The Animals in That Country (novel)

Last updated
The Animals in That Country
The Animals in That Country.jpeg
Author Laura Jean McKay
CountryAustralia
Language English
Publisher Scribe
Publication date
March 31, 2020
Pages288
Awards
ISBN 978-1925849530 (original paperback)
OCLC 1276806803

The Animals in That Country is a 2020 novel by Laura Jean McKay, published by Scribe. The novel won the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (2020), [1] Arthur C. Clarke Award (2021), [2] Victorian Prize for Literature (2021), and Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction (2021). [3]

Contents

In the novel, "A pandemic enables animals and humans to communicate," resulting "in a fierce and funny exploration of other consciousnesses and the limits of language." [4]

Background

The Animals in That Country was inspired by McKay's experiences of the chikungunya virus caught at a writer's festival in Bali in 2013. [5] She had started working on the novel at that time; its eventual release at the start of COVID-19 pandemic was a coincidence. [6] [7] [5] McKay said of her experiences recording the audiobook in March 2020: [8]

I had spent years concocting the most impossible virus, only to witness a disease beyond my imagination infecting, killing and driving the real world towards global isolation. It was a relief to get back into the booth and read the sections of the book where the animals start talking.

The title is a homage to a 1968 poetry collection by Margaret Atwood. [9]

Reception

The Animals in That Country received a starred review from Shelf Awareness. [10] Booklist said the novel is "not just a horror story ... but one filled with humor, optimism, and grace: a wild ride worth taking." [11] The Guardian described it as an "extraordinary debut", and "a stirring attempt to inhabit other consciousnesses and a wry demonstration of the limits of our own language and empathy." [12]

The director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award said, "The novel speaks for the silent victims of our real-world climate crises, but while the environmental and social themes are deeply serious, our judges also praised the book's dark humour, sense of character and place, and its active opposition to easy genre tropes." [13]

Slate named The Animals in That Country one of the top ten books of 2020. [14] The Sunday Times selected it as one of the five best science-fiction books of the year. [15]

Awards for The Animals in That Country
YearAwardCategoryResultRef.
2020 Aurealis Award Aurealis–Best Science Fiction Novel Won [1]
Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Debut)Nominated
2021 ABIA Small Publishers' Adult Book of the YearWon [16]
Arthur C. Clarke Award Won [2]
Australian Literature Society ALS Gold Medal Shortlisted [17]
Miles Franklin Literary Award Longlisted [18]
Readings Prize New Australian FictionShortlisted [19]
Stella Prize Shortlisted [20]
Victorian Premier's Literary Award Victorian Prize for LiteratureWon [3]
Victorian Premier's Prize for Fiction Won [3]

Related Research Articles

The Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People, colloquially called the Vicky, is given annually at the Writers' Trust Awards to a writer or illustrator whose body of work has been "inspirational to Canadian youth". It is a top honour for Canadian children's writers and Canadian children's book illustrators.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edgar Awards</span> Literary award for work in the crime genre

The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theater published or produced in the previous year.

The Guardian Children's Fiction Prize or Guardian Award was a literary award that annual recognised one fiction book written for children or young adults and published in the United Kingdom. It was conferred upon the author of the book by The Guardian newspaper, which established it in 1965 and inaugurated it in 1967. It was a lifetime award in that previous winners were not eligible. At least from 2000 the prize was £1,500. The prize was apparently discontinued after 2016, though no formal announcement appears to have been made.

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is an international children's literary award established by the Swedish government in 2002 to honour the Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002). The prize is five million SEK, making it the richest award in children's literature and one of the richest literary prizes in the world. The annual cost of 10 million SEK is financed with tax money.

Sonya Louise Hartnett is an Australian author of fiction for adults, young adults, and children. She has been called "the finest Australian writer of her generation". For her career contribution to "children's and young adult literature in the broadest sense" Hartnett won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award from the Swedish Arts Council in 2008, the biggest prize in children's literature.

The Victorian Premier's Literary Awards were created by the Victorian Government with the aim of raising the profile of contemporary creative writing and Australia's publishing industry. As of 2013, it is reportedly Australia's richest literary prize with the top winner receiving A$125,000 and category winners A$25,000 each.

The Orwell Prize is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity governed by a board of trustees. Four prizes are awarded each year: one each for a fiction and non-fiction book on politics, one for journalism and one for "Exposing Britain's Social Evils" ; between 2009 and 2012, a fifth prize was awarded for blogging. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art".

<i>The Animals in That Country</i> 1986 poetry collection by Margaret Atwood

The Animals in That Country is a 1968 poetry collection written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. It is her fifth volume of poetry.

The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger is an annual award given by the British Crime Writers' Association for best thriller of the year. The award is sponsored by the estate of Ian Fleming.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yiyun Li</span> Chinese writer and professor

Yiyun Li is a Chinese-born writer and professor in the United States. Her short stories and novels have won several awards, including the PEN/Hemingway Award and Guardian First Book Award for A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, the 2020 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award for Where Reasons End, and the 2023 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for The Book of Goose. She is an editor of the Brooklyn-based literary magazine A Public Space.

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the United Kingdom's first literary award for comic literature. Established in 2000 and named in honour of P. G. Wodehouse, past winners include Paul Torday in 2007 with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Marina Lewycka with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian 2005 and Jasper Fforde for The Well of Lost Plots in 2004. Gary Shteyngart was the first American winner in 2011.

The Macavity Awards, established in 1987, are a literary award for mystery writers. Nominated and voted upon annually by the members of the Mystery Readers International, the award is named for the "mystery cat" of T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats. The award is given in four categories—best novel, best first novel, best nonfiction, and best short story. The Sue Feder Historical Mystery has been given in conjunction with the Macavity Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barry Award (crime novel prize)</span> Award for crime writing

The Barry Award is a crime literary prize awarded annually since 1997 by the editors of Deadly Pleasures, an American quarterly publication for crime fiction readers. From 2007 to 2009 the award was jointly presented with the publication Mystery News. The prize is named after Barry Gardner, an American critic.

The Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction is a British literary award founded in 2010. At £25,000, it is one of the largest literary awards in the UK. The award was created by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, whose ancestors were closely linked to Scottish author Sir Walter Scott, who is generally considered the originator of historical fiction with the novel Waverley in 1814.

The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize is an annual award presented by The Center for Fiction, a non-profit organization in New York City, for the best debut novel. From 2006 to 2011, it was called the John Sargent, Sr. First Novel Prize in honor of John Turner Sargent, Sr., and, from 2011 to 2014, the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, named after Center for Fiction board member Nancy Dunnan and her journalist father Ray W. Flaherty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Namwali Serpell</span> Zambian feminist academic and writer (born 1980)

Namwali Serpell is an American and Zambian writer who teaches in the United States. In April 2014, she was named on Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 Sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Her short story "The Sack" won the 2015 Caine Prize for African fiction in English. In 2020, Serpell won the Belles-lettres category Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2019 for her debut novel The Old Drift.

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 2020.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Laura Jean McKay</span> Australian author

Laura Jean McKay is an Australian author and creative writing lecturer. In 2021 she won the Victorian Prize for Literature and the Arthur C. Clarke Award for her novel The Animals in That Country.

The Costa Book Award for First Novel, formerly known as the Whitbread Award (1971-2006), was an annual literary award for authors' debut novels, part of the Costa Book Awards which were discontinued in 2022, the 2021 awards being the last made.

Jessica Au is an Australian editor and bookseller, and author of the novels Cargo and Cold Enough for Snow. Au won the inaugural Novel prize in 2022. She is based in Melbourne.

References

  1. 1 2 "Aurealis Awards 2020 winners announced | Books+Publishing". Books+Publishing. 9 July 2021. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  2. 1 2 "Books & Authors Awards: Arthur C. Clarke Winner". Shelf Awareness. 2021-09-28. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  3. 1 2 3 "Awards: Victorian Prize for Literature". Shelf Awareness. 2021-02-04. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  4. Jordan, Justine (2020-10-07). "The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay review – an extraordinary debut". the Guardian. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  5. 1 2 Lacy, Judith (5 February 2021). "Palmerston North's Laura Jean McKay wins Victorian literature prize". Manawatu Guardian. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  6. "Laura Jean McKay wins $100,000 Victorian literature prize for The Animals in That Country". The Guardian. 1 February 2021. Retrieved 13 July 2021.
  7. Blackwell, Adam (28 September 2021). "Manawatū author claims top science fiction prize with pandemic novel". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  8. McKay, Laura Jean (6 April 2020). "The novel coronavirus: On writing a pandemic, then watching it play out". The Spinoff. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  9. Blackwell, Adam (28 September 2021). "Manawatū author claims top science fiction prize with pandemic novel". Stuff.co.nz. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  10. Lombardi, Linda (2020-12-11). "The Animals in that Country". Shelf Awareness. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  11. Gladstein, Carol (2020-07-20). "The Animals In That Country". Booklist. Retrieved 2022-07-31.
  12. Jordan, Justine (7 October 2020). "The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay review – an extraordinary debut". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  13. Flood, Alison (27 September 2021). "Laura Jean McKay wins the Arthur C Clarke award". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 September 2021.
  14. Kois, Dan (2020-12-09). "The Best Books of 2020". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  15. Ings, Simon (29 November 2020). "Best sci-fi books of the year 2020" . The Sunday Times. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  16. "The Animals in That Country wins ABIA's Small Publishers' Adult Book of The Year". Scribe. 3 May 2021. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  17. "ALS Gold Medal". ASAL - Association for the Study of Australian Literature. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  18. "Awards: Miles Franklin Literary Longlist". Shelf Awareness. 2021-05-19. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  19. "The Readings Prize for New Australian Fiction shortlist 2020". Readings. Retrieved 2022-08-01.
  20. "Awards: NBCC and Rathbones Folio Winners; Dylan Thomas and Stella Shortlists". Shelf Awareness. 2021-03-26. Retrieved 2022-08-01.