Longlist 2012
The longlist will be announced soon. Below are examples of the types of books that would have been eligible for the Book Prize in their years of publication.
Fiction
The Sea (2005)
John Banville
Following the loss of his wife to cancer, art historian Max Morden revisits the seaside village where he once spent a traumatic summer as a child. While there, Morden reflects on his life and loves, both of which seem to be slipping further from him as he endures middle age alone. Banville portrays the pratfalls and brief, lucid insights of human memory in a way that is disarmingly true to life.
Love in the Time of Cholera (1988)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (author), Edith Grossman (translator)
His first book after receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982, 'Love in the Time of Cholera' pushed both Garcia Marquez's abilities and his popularity as a writer to their pinnacle. In a novel that luxuriates in its own length, the author tackles his grand themes - ageing, illness, love and death - with philosophical sensitivity and resonant sensuality.
Three Junes (2002)
Julia Glass
Glass's novel explores the various ways in which people attempt to cope with illness and loss in life. A young American painter enchants the recently widowed Paul McLeod in Greece one June, and then encounters his son Fenno, a gay expatriate living in New York ten years later, having herself undergone a great transformation. Compassionately examining issues including pregnancy and AIDS, Glass's work places the idea of health in the larger contexts of bereavement and longing.
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (2003)
Mark Haddon
In Haddon's debut novel, a convincing and sympathetic portrait of Asperger's syndrome, the reader is compelled to see the world through 15-year-old Christopher's eyes as he investigates the death of a neighbour's dog. Negotiating his way through life via compulsive categorisation and prodding attempts to understand people and events, Christopher's story gives a captivating insight into autism, growing up and understanding the world.
Never Let Me Go (2006)
Kazuo Ishiguro
In Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, the tropes of science fiction unfold with an unsettling coolness. Foregoing sensationalism to make his tale all the more startling, Ishiguro relates the story of a group of students at an experimental boarding school. The subtly exploitative customs of the small community belie the real purpose of the students, as it gradually becomes clear that they are clones bred for a single purpose.
Saturday (2005)
Ian McEwan
Set over the course of a single day in the life of successful neurosurgeon Henry Perowne, 'Saturday' serves as a near-perfect example of its author's talent for unravelling the seemingly innocuous facets of modern life into chains of devastating consequences. Perowne's day begins ordinarily, though it soon spirals out of his control. As in other McEwan works, external events, even those of ostensibly no personal significance, can throw disconnected lives together and tear others apart.
Non-fiction
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (1997)
Jean-Dominique Bauby (author), Jeremy Leggatt (translator)
This bestselling memoir documents the author's struggle to cope with the sudden onset of 'locked-in syndrome' following a stroke at the age of 44. Bauby's only way of communicating was to blink his left eyelid - the one part of his body he could still control. His moving account celebrates the "butterfly" of human imagination, through which all of us are able to escape our physical confinements.
Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation (2002)
Oliva Judson
An enormously enjoyable popular science book, 'Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation' is written from the perspective of an evolutionary agony aunt, analysing the sexual tics of all manner of species. Covering everything from promiscuity to monogamy, with touching accounts of cannibalism, asexuality, incest and hermaphroditism along the way, Judson's book is consistently entertaining and fantastically informative.
The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity (1999)
Roy Porter
Porter's ambitious account of Western medical traditions and breakthroughs is prodigiously informative, and not once falls short of its aims. Covering all of the major events and figures in medical history as well as countless illuminating examples at its sidelines, 'The Greatest Benefit to Mankind' is a wonderful example of the importance of literature to medicine.
The Medical Detectives (1980)
Berton Roueché
With this award-winning collection of investigative journalism, Berton Roueché opened up to the public a previously unheard-of world of medical mysteries spanning 30 years. In clear, economical prose, the author reports on the gap between medical knowledge and the real life cases that conflict with and occasionally contradict it, as well as the brilliant efforts of those whose job it is to solve these fascinating puzzles.
The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (1985)
Oliver Sacks
An instant bestseller, largely thanks to its author's sympathetic, expressive writing, Sacks's collection of neurological case studies helped to bring neuroscience into the greater public's perception and appreciation. The book gives a fascinating glimpse into some of the neurological disorders that Sacks encountered as a practicing neurologist - ranging from Tourette's to phantom limb syndrome.
Illness as Metaphor (1978)
Susan Sontag
Sontag's influential work explores popular attitudes towards illness, deconstructing the harmful myths and metaphors that have commonly been applied in discussing medicine and ill health throughout history. Focusing on tuberculosis in the 19th century and cancer in the 20th, the author powerfully argues that the politics of the language governing their treatment have often exacerbated the conditions themselves.