Synchronicity

Yesterday, the Library's new exhibit Literary Lives: The World of Francis Steegmuller and Shirley Hazzard opened to great fanfare. Today, Shirley Hazzard's The Bay of Noon was shortlisted for the Lost Man Booker Prize, to recognize books published in 1970 that were not eligible for consideration for the Booker. A coincidence, for sure.
















But here's the really interesting part: Muriel Spark's The Driver's Seat was also on the Lost Man Booker shortlist. If you've read curator Harriet Shapiro's interview with Shirley Hazzard (published in the excellent exhibition catalog), then you also know that Muriel Spark was the one who introduced Shirley and Francis, and the rest is history, as they say.

Lost Man Booker Prize for Hazzard?

The Library's own Shirley Hazzard is on the longlist for the Lost Man Booker Prize for the best omitted novel of 1970! These are novels that missed out on being named to the Booker longlist due to rule changes in 1971.

Ms. Hazzard has been nominated for The Bay of Noon, her beautiful and evocative novel about a young woman who flees to Naples to escape her past.

The shortlist will be announced in March, and the reading public will decide the winner by voting on the Man Booker Prize website. The winner will be announced in May.