5 April 2006
Thomas Wharton on Shortlist for
IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Gaspereau Press is delighted to announce that Thomas Wharton’s The Logogryph (Gaspereau Press, 2004) has been shortlisted for the 2006 Impac Dublin Literary Award. Wharton’s is the only Canadian title among the ten shortlisted for this year’s prize. The only Canadian to win the prize in past years has been Alistair MacLeod in 2001 for No Great Mischief. Shortlisted Canadian titles from previous years include The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (2002), Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (2004) and Elle by Douglas Glover (2005). The other shortlisted titles this year are:

Graceland by Chris Abani (Netherlands), published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux
Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam (UK), published by Faber & Faber
Havoc, In Its Third Year by Ronan Bennett (UK), published by Bloomsbury / Simon & Schuster
The Closed Circle by Jonathan Coe (UK), published by Viking
An Altered Light by Jens Christian Grøndahl (Denmark), translated from the Danish by Anne Born, published by Harcourt
The Swallows of Kabul by Yasmina Khadra (France), translated from the French by John Cullen, published by Nan A. Talese / Doubleday / Heinemann
Breaking the Tongue by Vyvyane Loh (USA), published by W.W. Norton
Don’t Move by Margaret Mazzantini (Italy), translated from the Italian by John Cullen, published by Chatto & Windus
The Master by Colm Tóibín (Ireland), published by Picador / Scribner

The prize is the most lucrative for a single work, at 100,000 euros (about $140,000 Canadian), and is awarded to a novel in English or English translation. The award was created by Dublin City as a prize for literature with national and international interest. The sponsors are Dublin City and the corporation Impac. The nomination process is managed by the Dublin City Libraries, with the longlist based on titles put forward by over one hundred libraries worldwide. The shortlist is selected by a rotating international jury. This year’s winner will be announced on 14 June 2006. For more information about the prize, visit www.impacdublinaward.ie

The Logogryph: A Bibliography of Imaginary Books is Thomas Wharton’s third work of fiction. It begins in a small town in the mountains when a young boy is given a suitcase filled with battered old books. This opens a lifelong pursuit of the elusive creature known as the logogryph. Describing imaginary books and alternate realities, Wharton explores the mysterious alchemy called reading. The Logogryph won the 2005 Alberta Book Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the 2005 Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic.

This book is a Smyth-sewn paperback with a jacket and full sleeve. The text was typeset by Andrew Steeves in Caslon types and printed on Rolland Zephyr laid paper. The jacket and sleeve were printed letterpress. The inside features illustrations by Wesley Bates.

Gaspereau Press is a literary publisher and printer based in Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada. The press is committed to literature and the book arts, incorporating a range of modern and antique forms of printing and binding to create books that are distinctive in manufacture and design. Its publications have won numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Evelyn Richardson Prize for non-fiction, the A.M. Klein Prize for poetry and the Alcuin Award for excellence in book design.

For more information contact
Beth Crosby at Gaspereau Press
47 Church Avenue, Kentville, NS, B4N 2M7
902-678-6002, info@gaspereau.com