AWARD-WINNING author and former Galway student Julian Gough says he has been “overwhelmed” by the response to his determined bid to win this year’s Not the Booker Prize.
The London-Irish novelist, who is already a winner of the BBC National Short Story Award, has been longlisted for the alternative Booker, run by the Guardian newspaper and described as the most “boisterous book prize of the year”.
He faces a dilemma – his selected work, Jude in London, is not published until September 6th, but readers' nominations and reviews have to be submitted by tomorrow evening to make the shortlist.
With his publisher’s reluctant support, and the help of social media, Gough has offered free copies of the new book by e-mail to volunteers willing, ready and able to read it in a day or so, and submit a 150-word review with their vote.
Such was the response over the weekend that he was forced to rise at dawn in his Berlin home to send portable document format copies of the book to correspondents in North America, Egypt and Ireland.