David Cohen Prize 2011
The winner
The David Cohen Prize for Literature 2011 has been awarded to the English novelist, essayist and short story writer Julian Barnes for his lifetime’s achievement in literature.
Julian Barnes is one of England’s foremost fiction writers. Shortlisted on three occasions for the Man Booker Prize (for Flaubert’s Parrot, England, England, and Arthur and George), he is as lauded overseas as in his homeland. The French Ministry of Culture named him Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004 and he has also been awarded the Austrian State Prize for Literature.
On winning the Prize Julian Barnes said:
The measure of a literary award's value lies in its list of previous winners. Over the last 18 years the David Cohen Prize has established itself as the greatest honour a British or Irish writer can receive within these islands. It is also conducted with proper secrecy and dignity. So it is a matter of sober delight to be added to the list of prize-winners.
Mark Lawson, chair of judges, said of this year’s winner:
The David Cohen Prize is in effect a UK version of the Nobel Prize for Literature, open to writers of fiction and non-fiction, comedy and tragedy. Within those divisions, there are writers who are most efficient at prose or dialogue, structure or style, narrative or character, plot or ideas, novels or short stories. What is remarkable about Julian Barnes is that he has excelled in all these areas: from the combination of literary criticism and fiction in Flaubert's Parrot, through the structural daring of the multiple narratives in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters to the historical faction of Arthur and George and the essayistic reflection on faith and mortality in Nothing To Be Frightened Of. The already extraordinary list of David Cohen Prize-winning authors has been fittingly extended.
The Clarissa Luard Award
The winner of the David Cohen Prize for Literature also chooses the recipient of the Clarissa Luard Award, which is worth £12,500. The award, funded by Arts Council England, is given to a literature organisation that supports young writers and readers or an individual writer under the age of 35. Julian Barnes presented the 2011 award to The Reading Agency to support their reading initiatives for young offenders.
Julian Barnes on the Clarissa Luard Award:
It seems to me that the practice of reading is currently more under threat than the practice of writing. There will always be young writers; will there always be young readers? Our literacy levels are falling, and - disgracefully - public libraries are threatened with closure. So the Clarissa Luard Award is to go to The Reading Agency, which since 2002 has had remarkable success in promoting reading skills and confidence among the young. They work through libraries and other institutions. I have asked them to apply the Award to their work in young offenders' institutions, where an estimated 25% of inmates have the reading age of a seven-year-old. They are going to run a special programme for the two years of the prize, targeting ten Young Offenders Institutions across the country.
Biography
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England on January 19, 1946. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964 and at Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he graduated in modern languages (with honors) in 1968. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. In 1977, Barnes began working as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesmen and the New Review. From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesmen and then for the Observer.
Barnes has received several awards and honors for his writing including the Somerset Maugham Award (Metroland 1981), two Booker Prize nominations (Flaubert's Parrot 1984, England, England 1998); Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (FP 1985); Prix Médicis (FP 1986); E M Forster Award (American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1986); Gutenberg Prize (1987); Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy, 1988); and the Prix Femina (Talking It Over 1992). Barnes was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1988, Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 and Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004. In 1993 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation and in 2004 won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. In 2011 he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Awarded biennially, the prize honours a lifetime's achievement in literature for a writer in the English language who is a citizen of the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland.
Julian Barnes has written numerous novels, short stories, and essays. He has also translated a book by French author Alphonse Daudet and a collection of German cartoons by Volker Kriegel. His writing has earned him considerable respect as an author who deals with the themes of history, reality, truth and love. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 for his novel The Sense of an Ending.
Barnes lives in London.
Books by Julian Barnes
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The Lemon Table
Vintage
The Lemon Table
Julian Barnes
Winner, David Cohen Prize
If Barnes's new collection has a theme it is 'rage in age': the settings of the stories range from eighteenth-century Sweden and nineteenth-century Russia to a barber's shop and the South Bank concert hall in London.
An earlier collection about the British in France, Cross Channel, is also published by Picador
Publisher: Vintage
Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England on January 19, 1946. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964 and at Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he graduated in modern languages (with honors) in 1968. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. In 1977, Barnes began working as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesmen and the New Review. From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesmen and then for the Observer.
Barnes has received several awards and honors for his writing including the Somerset Maugham Award (Metroland 1981), two Booker Prize nominations (Flaubert's Parrot 1984, England, England 1998); Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (FP 1985); Prix Médicis (FP 1986); E M Forster Award (American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1986); Gutenberg Prize (1987); Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy, 1988); and the Prix Femina (Talking It Over 1992). Barnes was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1988, Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 and Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004. In 1993 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation and in 2004 won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. In 2011 he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Awarded biennially, the prize honours a lifetime's achievement in literature for a writer in the English language who is a citizen of the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland.
Julian Barnes has written numerous novels, short stories, and essays. He has also translated a book by French author Alphonse Daudet and a collection of German cartoons by Volker Kriegel. His writing has earned him considerable respect as an author who deals with the themes of history, reality, truth and love. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 for his novel The Sense of an Ending.
Barnes lives in London.
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Pulse
Jonathan Cape
Pulse
Julian Barnes
Winner, David Cohen Prize
When Julian Barnes is good, he is very good. And he's very rarely not good. He always seems completely in control of his subject and the prose is assured and absorbing. But whilst he is widely respected and admired, he is not (in this country anyway) necessarily loved or cherished. He can seem remote and intellectual. His short stories provide a lighter and more approachable point of contact. Pulse, Barnes' third collection of short fiction, plays with this reputation and explores the key difference between people who interact intellectually and people who engage on an emotional level.
The stories in the first part present a range of chastened characters living out compromised, overtly middle-class, British existences, neither content nor hungry for escape. These stories are intercut with one long story ('At Phil and Joanna's') which is divided into four sections. This longer story is told almost exclusively through unattributed dialogue - classic dinner-party piffle that covers everything and nothing:
'I really think Obama can do it. As your token American.'
'I agree. Well, I'm 60/40 on it.'
'You're a liberal - you're 60/40 on everything.'
'I'm not sure I'd agree.'
'See, he's 60/40 even on whether or not he's 60/40.'
This tone of surface detail and intellectualised reality - which is fascinating and illustrative in its own way - gives way to a deeper and more emotional reality in the second part. The characters in these stories operate outside of narrow linguistic constraints and reveal and communicate their thoughts and emotions much more fully. The eponymous hero in 'The Limner' is the most direct example of this - a deaf artist who absorbs the world he experiences with great sensitivity and converts it into a different form of truth through his portraits.
Taken as a whole, these stories are a remarkable illustration of the collective pulse - from the intellectual to the intuitive - of human life.Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Julian Barnes
Julian Barnes was born in Leicester, England on January 19, 1946. He was educated at the City of London School from 1957 to 1964 and at Magdalen College, Oxford, from which he graduated in modern languages (with honors) in 1968. After graduation, he worked as a lexicographer for the Oxford English Dictionary supplement for three years. In 1977, Barnes began working as a reviewer and literary editor for the New Statesmen and the New Review. From 1979 to 1986 he worked as a television critic, first for the New Statesmen and then for the Observer.
Barnes has received several awards and honors for his writing including the Somerset Maugham Award (Metroland 1981), two Booker Prize nominations (Flaubert's Parrot 1984, England, England 1998); Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize (FP 1985); Prix Médicis (FP 1986); E M Forster Award (American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 1986); Gutenberg Prize (1987); Grinzane Cavour Prize (Italy, 1988); and the Prix Femina (Talking It Over 1992). Barnes was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1988, Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1995 and Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2004. In 1993 he was awarded the Shakespeare Prize by the FVS Foundation and in 2004 won the Austrian State Prize for European Literature. In 2011 he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Awarded biennially, the prize honours a lifetime's achievement in literature for a writer in the English language who is a citizen of the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland.
Julian Barnes has written numerous novels, short stories, and essays. He has also translated a book by French author Alphonse Daudet and a collection of German cartoons by Volker Kriegel. His writing has earned him considerable respect as an author who deals with the themes of history, reality, truth and love. He won the Man Booker Prize in 2011 for his novel The Sense of an Ending.
Barnes lives in London.
Judges
Writer and broadcaster Mark Lawson was the 2011 Chair of Judges, and will oversee the next five instalments of the prize. He replaced former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion who was chair for ten years until 2009.
The winner of the David Cohen Prize is nominated and selected by a panel of judges comprising authors, literary critics and academics.
Mark Lawson, Chair of Judges, commented:
Because the David Cohen Prize rewards sustained excellence over a long period, the candidates include the greatest living names in British and Irish literature: authors I studied at school and university, have read with pleasure over decades and regularly reviewed and interviewed as a cultural journalist. So, although it will be difficult for the judges to choose only one of them, it is also an honour to have the chance to do so. The David Cohen Prize feels to me like the closest we have in this country to a Nobel Prize for Literature.
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Ellah AllfreyEllah Allfrey is Deputy Editor at Granta, Senior Literary Editor at Jonathan Cape, formerly of Penguin.
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Simon ArmitageSimon Armitage is a poet, playwright, novelist and senior lecturer in the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University.
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Michael BillingtonMichael Billington is the Guardian's theatre critic, former presenter on Kaleidoscope (now Front Row), author of several biographical and critical studies of subjects relating to British theatre and the arts.
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Sarah ChurchwellSarah Churchwell is a lecturer in English Literature and Culture at UEA. She writes regularly for the Guardian, the Independent, the New York Times Book Review, and the TLS.
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Tobias HillTobias Hill is a poet, essayist, writer of short stories and novelist, inaugural Programme Director of the Faber Academy. He was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in 2002/2004.
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Kathryn HughesKathryn Hughes is a professor in the School of Literature and Creative Writing at UEA, Norwich. She is the author of three books of biography, most recently on Mrs Beeton. Her literary journalism appears in the Guardian newspaper.
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Mark LawsonBroadcaster, journalistMark Lawson, Chair of Judges, is a journalist, broadcaster and author.
Since 1998, Mark Lawson has been the main presenter of Radio 4's arts and culture programme Front Row. As a writer for radio and television, his scripts include The Vision Thing, Absolute Power, The Third Soldier Holds His Thighs and What Did I Say? His novels include Idlewild, Going Out Live and Enough is Enough. He is a columnist and feature writer for the Guardian, and was voted Cultural Commentator of the Year in 2010. He was previously television critic and parliamentary sketch writer for The Independent and presented BBC2's weekly arts round up from 1993 to 2005 under the titles Late Review, Review and Newsnight Review.
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Karl Miller
Karl Miller is a literary editor, critic and writer formerly Editor at New Statesman and the London Review of Books, he was also head of the English Department at University College London until 1992.
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Michael ProdgerMichael Prodger is the Literary Editor of the Sunday Telegraph, he also works for The Spectator. He was a judge on the BBC4 Samuel Johnson Prize in 2006 and the Man Booker 2009.
About the David Cohen Prize 2011
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