Galway novelist Julian Gough has won third place in the “Not the Booker Award”, an alternative to the international literary event.
Gough secured third in this week's voting for his new work, Jude in London, which was described as "charming and dazzling" by the Guardian's "Not the Booker" judging team.
Winner was King Crow by Michael Stewart with 114 votes, followed by Spurious by Lars Iyer with 108 votes. Gough's work received 44 votes in the contest which was open to the public. However, voters had to submit a 150-word review.
Stewart's novel was described by Sam Jordison of the Guardian as "psychologically adept, funny, nasty, daft and shockingly realistic", while Iyer's work was described as "smart, original, hilarious and beautifully written".
The winner receives a mug worth about £1.50.
“Julian Gough and his publishers…ran an inspired campaign, ensuring people were able to read the book before it was released by inviting people to download a “trust” edition before paying for it,” Jordison noted yesterday.
"We're aware of a bigger threat than piracy – oblivion,” Gough had explained in his submission. “It is not easy, in this cash- and time-poor age, with free forms of entertainment abounding, to persuade people to spend money on an unknown book."
Gough, who is of London Irish extraction, is already a winner of the BBC National Short Story Award among other plaudits.
He was one of several Irish writers to make the 99-name “longlist” in the “Not the Booker” this year, along with Kevin Barry, Anne Enright and Dermot Healy. He was the only Irish writer to make the final shortlist of six.
Described as far more “rambunctious” than the actual Booker, and the most “boisterous book prize of the year”, the alternative event was initiated three years ago.
Its main aim was to make such literary awards more democratic, by using the internet. The Booker judging panel was “unrepresentative”, and winning works were “always about post-colonial guilt, Irish poverty or English middle-class Islingtonians having terribly important thoughts about their boring love lives”, it was argued.
“The Not The Booker Prize is an annual online flame-war-slash-literary-debate that can be very helpful in drawing attention to unusual books,” Gough explained. “It has such an anarchic, Wild West feel to it."
Gough, who was born in London to Irish parents, was reared in Co Tipperary and studied English and philosophy at NUI Galway. He learned “how to write” while living on social welfare, and also crafted lyrics for the Galway underground rock band, Toasted Heretic, before moving to Berlin.
He is author of the Jude trilogy, which began with Juno and Juliet, published in 2001. He has won the BBC National Short Story award an American Pushcart prize and has been shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.
