10 Jul 2012 09:42:18
Moving from a peep show to a summer camp for the elderly, from a West Bank settlement to a vodka-soaked Florida get-together, Nathan Englander's What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank has won the American author the €25,000 Frank O'Connor prize. The world's most lucrative award for a collection of short stories, this year the Frank O'Connor pitted Englander against names including Irish author Kevin Barry, acclaimed Israeli writer Etgar Keret and the Booker-shortlisted Sarah Hall. But despite stiff competition from Barry, who won the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank short story award earlier this year, Englander's critically acclaimed second collection came out on top.
The panel of judges praised it as "powerful and resonant", and said that they were impressed by "the seasoned maturity shown by the author in stories multilayered in meaning and written in an austere, contemporary idiom applied to ancient ethnic themes".
"His prose, like the snow of good King Wenceslas, is deep and crisp and even, neither over-florid nor pedestrian," said judge and poet James Harpur. "Nathan Englander's stories are always well crafted, establishing a premise that has the promise of drama and tension: an upright citizen going to a peep show; a woman symbolically selling her child to a neighbour; the summer camp that begins to revive memories of a concentration camp; taking revenge on an antisemite bully."
The story from which the collection takes its title is an homage to Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, with Englander's take transposing Carver's story to Florida from New Mexico, and replacing gin with vodka. It sees two Jewish couples playing "the Righteous Gentile game", which necessitates discussing which of their acquaintances would protect them in the event of a Holocaust. Englander, who was set to attend today's ceremony, joins former winners of the Frank O'Connor international short story award including Edna O'Brien, Ron Rash and Haruki Murakami.
The prize is funded by Cork City Council and was established by the Munster Literature Centre in memory of renowned short story writer Frank O'Connor. The prize money dropped to €25,000 this year from €35,000 in previous years, and director and poet Patrick Cotter said that funding had not been confirmed for next year. "While there is no guarantee it will be cut, there is no guarantee it will continue," he said.
