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Tag: Award winner

  • Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

    Harry Potter has grown up neglected by his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys, sleeping in a cupboard under the stairs in suburban Surrey. On his eleventh birthday a giant named Hagrid tells him the truth: his parents were a witch and wizard, killed by the dark wizard Voldemort, and Harry is famous in the magical world for surviving the attack as a baby.

    Harry enters Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, travelling from a hidden platform at King's Cross. He befriends Ron Weasley and the brilliant, rule-abiding Hermione Granger, discovers a talent for the airborne sport Quidditch, clashes with the snobbish Draco Malfoy and the cold Professor Snape, and starts to suspect that something valuable is being guarded inside the castle.

    Rowling combines a boarding-school story with a richly imagined hidden world of wands, houses, ghosts and magical creatures. The book was rejected by several publishers before Bloomsbury accepted it, then launched a seven-book series that became a worldwide phenomenon. It was published in the US as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

    Book details

    AuthorJ. K. Rowling
    First published1997
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreFantasy
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)223
    SettingSurrey and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Scotland
    AwardsNestle Smarties Book Prize 1997

    Themes

    • Friendship
    • Belonging
    • Courage
    • Good versus evil
    • Orphanhood

    Who should read it

    Young readers starting out with fantasy and adults who want to see where the phenomenon began.

  • Dune

    Thousands of years in the future, a galactic empire depends on melange, a spice that extends life and enables space navigation, found only on the harsh desert planet Arrakis. The Emperor hands control of Arrakis to Duke Leto Atreides, removing the rival House Harkonnen, but the gift is a trap. The Duke's son Paul, trained in combat and in the mental disciplines of his mother Jessica, travels with the family to their new fief.

    On Arrakis, water is so scarce that people wear stillsuits to recycle their own moisture, and giant sandworms roam the dunes. The native Fremen, a fierce desert people, hold prophecies that seem to point at Paul. As betrayal unfolds, Paul and Jessica must survive among the Fremen while Paul's growing prescient visions show him terrifying possible futures.

    Herbert combined political intrigue, ecology, religion and economics into a densely built world, complete with appendices and glossaries. The novel warns against messianic leaders and resource dependence. It won the first Nebula Award and shared the Hugo, is often called the best-selling science fiction novel ever, and has been filmed by David Lynch and Denis Villeneuve.

    Book details

    AuthorFrank Herbert
    First published1965
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    SettingThe desert planet Arrakis, in the far future
    AwardsNebula Award for Best Novel 1965, Hugo Award for Best Novel 1966

    Themes

    • Power and politics
    • Ecology
    • Religion and messianism
    • Colonialism
    • Destiny

    Who should read it

    Science fiction readers who want deep worldbuilding and political intrigue on an epic scale.

  • Foundation

    The Galactic Empire has ruled for twelve thousand years from Trantor, a planet covered by a single city. Hari Seldon, a mathematician, has developed psychohistory, a science that predicts the behaviour of huge populations, and it tells him the Empire will collapse into thirty thousand years of barbarism. He cannot prevent the fall, but he believes he can reduce the dark age to a single millennium.

    Seldon arranges for a group of scientists and encyclopedists to be exiled to Terminus, a resource-poor planet at the galaxy's edge. The book then jumps forward across decades in linked episodes, as a series of leaders, among them the shrewd mayor Salvor Hardin and the trader Hober Mallow, face crises that Seldon foresaw, using wit, religion and commerce rather than force.

    Built from short stories first published in Astounding magazine in the 1940s, Foundation is a novel of ideas, driven by dialogue and political manoeuvring more than action. Inspired by Gibbon's history of Rome, it explores how civilisations decline. The trilogy won a special Hugo for Best All-Time Series in 1966 and has influenced generations of writers.

    Book details

    AuthorIsaac Asimov
    First published1951
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)255
    SettingTrantor and the planet Terminus in a declining Galactic Empire
    AwardsHugo Award for Best All-Time Series 1966 (Foundation trilogy)

    Themes

    • Fall of civilisations
    • Prediction and determinism
    • Knowledge preservation
    • Politics
    • Reason over force

    Who should read it

    Readers who like idea-driven science fiction about history, politics and the long view.

  • The Name of the Rose

    In the winter of 1327, William of Baskerville, an English Franciscan with a sharp, empirical mind, arrives at a Benedictine abbey in the mountains of northern Italy, accompanied by Adso of Melk, a young Benedictine novice who narrates the story many years later. William has come to help prepare a tense theological debate between papal envoys and Franciscan representatives over the poverty of Christ.

    Soon after their arrival a young monk is found dead, and more deaths follow over seven days. The abbot asks William to investigate, and his inquiries lead toward the abbey's vast library, a forbidden maze of rooms guarded jealously by the monks, and toward a mysterious book that someone is willing to kill to protect. The Inquisition's arrival raises the stakes further.

    Eco, a semiotics professor, packs the novel with medieval philosophy, heresy, Latin quotations and debates about laughter and knowledge, while keeping a detective plot that nods to Sherlock Holmes. William Weaver's translation made it an international bestseller, it won Italy's Strega Prize, and it was filmed with Sean Connery in 1986.

    Book details

    AuthorUmberto Eco
    First published1980
    Original languageItalian
    Translated byWilliam Weaver
    GenreMystery
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)536
    SettingA Benedictine abbey in northern Italy, November 1327
    AwardsStrega Prize 1981

    Themes

    • Knowledge and censorship
    • Faith versus reason
    • Heresy
    • Power of the Church
    • Interpretation of signs

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy intellectual mysteries steeped in history, philosophy and medieval detail.

  • The Road

    Some years after an unexplained disaster has destroyed most life on Earth, a man and his young son push a shopping cart along a highway toward the coast, hoping the south will be warmer. The sky is grey with ash, plants and animals are gone, and the few survivors scavenge for canned food or have turned to brutal violence, including cannibalism.

    Neither character is named. The man is ill and determined to protect the boy at any cost, while the boy, born after the catastrophe, clings to the idea that they are the good guys who carry the fire. Their days are a cycle of searching abandoned houses, hiding from roving gangs and talking in brief, tender exchanges as the father teaches survival and tries to preserve his son's humanity.

    McCarthy writes in fragmented, sparse prose with almost no punctuation for dialogue, creating a bleak, hypnotic rhythm. Beneath the horror is one of the most moving portraits of parental love in modern fiction. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007, was adapted into a film, and is a landmark of post-apocalyptic literature.

    Book details

    AuthorCormac McCarthy
    First published2006
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)287
    SettingA devastated post-apocalyptic United States, heading toward the southern coast
    AwardsPulitzer Prize for Fiction 2007

    Themes

    • Fatherhood
    • Survival
    • Hope
    • Morality amid collapse
    • Love

    Who should read it

    Readers who can handle darkness and want a spare, powerful story about a parent's love.

  • The Book Thief

    In 1939, nine-year-old Liesel Meminger is taken to live with foster parents on Himmel Street in Molching, a small town near Munich. On the way, at her brother's graveside, she picks up her first stolen book, a gravedigger's handbook she cannot yet read. Her accordion-playing foster father, Hans Hubermann, teaches her letters in the basement late at night, while his sharp-tongued wife Rosa hides real tenderness.

    Liesel befriends Rudy Steiner, a lemon-haired neighbour who idolises Jesse Owens, and begins rescuing books from Nazi bonfires and the library of the mayor's wife. The Hubermanns then take a dangerous step by hiding Max Vandenburg, a young Jewish man, in their basement. Words become Liesel's way of understanding and resisting the world around her.

    The narrator is Death, weary, wry and oddly compassionate, who announces some events in advance and comments on human nature. Zusak, an Australian whose parents grew up in Germany and Austria, drew on their stories. Published for adults in Australia and as young adult fiction elsewhere, the book became an international bestseller and a 2013 film.

    Book details

    AuthorMarkus Zusak
    First published2005
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreHistorical fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)552
    SettingMolching, a fictional town near Munich, Germany, 1939-1943
    AwardsMichael L. Printz Honor 2007

    Themes

    • The power of words
    • Death
    • Courage
    • Friendship
    • Life under Nazism

    Who should read it

    Teenagers and adults who want a moving Second World War story about books, family and kindness.

  • Life of Pi

    Piscine Molitor Patel, known as Pi, grows up in Pondicherry, where his father runs a zoo. A curious, spiritual boy, he becomes a practising Hindu, Christian and Muslim all at once, to the confusion of the local priests. When his family decides to emigrate to Canada with some of their animals, they sail on a Japanese cargo ship that sinks in the Pacific.

    Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with a wounded zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a fully grown Bengal tiger called Richard Parker. Much of the novel describes his survival over months at sea: rationing supplies, fishing, catching rainwater, learning to establish dominance over the tiger, and coping with despair, hunger and moments of wonder, including a strange floating island.

    Martel frames the story as one told to a writer who hears it is a tale that will make him believe in God, which signals the novel's interest in faith, storytelling and how people choose to understand suffering. It won the Booker Prize in 2002 and was adapted by Ang Lee into an Oscar-winning film.

    Book details

    AuthorYann Martel
    First published2001
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)319
    SettingPondicherry, India, and a lifeboat on the Pacific Ocean, 1970s
    AwardsBooker Prize 2002

    Themes

    • Faith
    • Survival
    • Storytelling
    • Animals and humans
    • Truth

    Who should read it

    Readers who want an adventure story that doubles as a meditation on belief.

  • The Remains of the Day

    Stevens has served as butler at Darlington Hall for more than thirty years. The house now belongs to a genial American, Mr Farraday, who lends him a car for a few days off. Stevens sets out for the West Country, ostensibly to persuade the former housekeeper, Miss Kenton, to return to work, and along the way he reminisces about his years under Lord Darlington.

    His memories centre on the interwar period, when Darlington hosted unofficial conferences of diplomats and politicians and drifted into sympathy with appeasement of Nazi Germany. Stevens recalls these events through the lens of professional duty and his ideal of dignity, and in doing so he skirts his relationship with Miss Kenton, whose warmth he repeatedly deflected.

    Ishiguro's achievement is the narrating voice: formal, self-justifying and quietly evasive, so the reader learns what Stevens cannot admit. The novel examines loyalty, emotional repression and the cost of devoting a life to someone else's judgment. It won the Booker Prize in 1989 and became an acclaimed film with Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson.

    Book details

    AuthorKazuo Ishiguro
    First published1989
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)245
    SettingDarlington Hall and the English West Country, July 1956, with memories of the 1920s-30s
    AwardsBooker Prize 1989

    Themes

    • Duty
    • Emotional repression
    • Regret
    • Dignity
    • Self-deception

    Who should read it

    Readers who appreciate subtle, restrained novels where what is left unsaid matters most.

  • Kafka on the Shore

    On his fifteenth birthday, a boy who calls himself Kafka Tamura runs away from his father's home in Tokyo, haunted by a dark prophecy and the absence of his mother and sister, who left when he was small. He ends up in Takamatsu on the island of Shikoku, where he finds refuge in a quiet private library run by the elegant, reserved Miss Saeki and a sharp librarian named Oshima.

    In alternating chapters, Satoru Nakata, an elderly man left unable to read after a strange incident during the Second World War, earns pocket money by finding lost cats, with whom he can converse. A violent encounter sends him on the road too, accompanied by a good-natured truck driver named Hoshino. Fish fall from the sky, Colonel Sanders appears, and the two journeys draw toward each other.

    Murakami borrows the shape of Greek tragedy, especially the Oedipus myth, and blends it with Japanese folklore, pop culture and classical music. The novel resists tidy explanation and invites readers to live with mysteries. Philip Gabriel's translation won it a wide English readership, and it received the World Fantasy Award in 2006.

    Book details

    AuthorHaruki Murakami
    First published2002
    Original languageJapanese
    Translated byPhilip Gabriel
    GenreLiterary fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)467
    SettingTokyo and Takamatsu, Shikoku, Japan
    AwardsWorld Fantasy Award for Best Novel 2006

    Themes

    • Fate
    • Identity
    • Memory
    • The unconscious
    • Loss of a parent

    Who should read it

    Readers who enjoy dreamlike, puzzling fiction that mixes myth, metaphysics and everyday detail.

  • The Handmaid’s Tale

    After a coup topples the United States government, a fundamentalist regime called Gilead takes power in New England. With birth rates collapsing, the few women still able to conceive are assigned as Handmaids to high-ranking Commanders and their wives, stripped of their names, property and right to read. The narrator, known only as Offred, is one of them.

    Offred recounts her daily routine of shopping trips, rituals and surveillance in the household of a Commander and his wife Serena Joy, interleaved with memories of her former life with a husband and daughter. Small risks, from forbidden games of Scrabble to whispered contact with other women, hint at resistance, and a chauffeur named Nick complicates her sense of who can be trusted.

    Atwood said she included nothing that had not already happened somewhere in history, which gives the book its chill. Its restrained, intimate first-person voice makes the horror feel personal rather than abstract. Winner of the Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award, it gained a vast new audience through the television series, and red handmaid robes became a protest symbol.

    Book details

    AuthorMargaret Atwood
    First published1985
    Original languageEnglish
    GenreScience fiction
    TypeFiction
    Pages (approx.)311
    SettingGilead, a theocracy in the former United States, around Cambridge, Massachusetts
    AwardsGovernor General's Award for English-language fiction 1985, Arthur C. Clarke Award 1987

    Themes

    • Reproductive control
    • Religious authoritarianism
    • Gender oppression
    • Resistance
    • Memory

    Who should read it

    Readers who want a gripping dystopia about women's rights, power and complicity.