By Kevin Duffy • Published 4th April 2013
Nod, the critically-acclaimed debut novel by Adrian Barnes, has beaten off record-breaking competition to be shortlisted for the 2013 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Nod is one of just six titles selected from a long-list of 82 novels. This is the award’s largest long-list since its inception in 1987, when Margaret Atwood won the prize for The Handmaid’s Tale.
Award director, Tom Hunter, said: ‘This is a fascinating and complex shortlist that demands repeated attention and thoughtful interpretation. Shortlisting six books from a potential list of 82 eligible submissions is no easy task by any critical standard … [It is] a shortlist that I hope people will find as much engaging and optimistic as it is subversive and challenging.’
The annual prize was established with a grant from Sir Arthur C Clarke in 1986, and is awarded to the year’s best science fiction novel first published in the United Kingdom.
This year’s award ceremony will take place on Wednesday 1st May, at the Royal Society, London. The winner will receive a cheque for £2013.00.
This is what the Guardian had to say about Nod:
‘The apocalypse comes in many forms, but none stranger than that of the chronic sleep deprivation that leads to mass psychosis in Adrian Barnes’s audacious novel Nod (Bluemoose, £7.99). Paul is a misanthropic hack writing a non-fiction book about obscure words when the world is afflicted and the majority of citizens begin to hallucinate solipsistic realities that Paul, as a Sleeper and a wordsmith, can influence. Barnes employs this brilliant idea to explore the nature of perception, redemption, and personal and social catastrophe. Outstanding.’
Adrian Barnes was born in Blackpool, England, but moved to Canada in 1969. You can watch a video here of Adrian discussing the Vancouver setting for Nod.
