Local Folks Make Good (Again)

It's an odd name for a literary prize--IMPAC; and odder still when you know that it stands for Improved Management Productivity and Control. But the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award is a big deal. At 100,000 euros (about $135,000), it's the richest award out there for an author.

This year, 169 libraries around the world nominated 138 novels for the prize. Nominees included Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, and Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie. But the winner was a little-known Norwegian author Per Petterson, for his novel Out Stealing Horses.

And to bring it all back home, Petterson is published in the US by the Twin Cities' own Graywolf Press. While they won't see any of the money, the award again reminds the literary world just how good Graywolf's judgment is.--David E