Annal:2004 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction
From AwardAnnals
Results of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in the year 2004. For a ranked list of books, try an honor roll:
- 2004 JT Black-Fiction winner
- Score: 10.54
Great Britain. 1984. The miners’ strike. The government against the people.
On initial publication, twenty years on from the strike, David Peace’s bravura novel GB84 was hugely acclaimed. In a bloody and dramatic fictional portrait of the year that was to leave an indelible mark on the nation’s consciousness, Peace dares to engage with the Britain’s social and political past, bringing it shockingly and brilliantly to life.
Havoc in Its Third Year: A Novel
- 2006 IMPAC Dublin shortlist
- 2004 JT Black-Fiction shortlist
- Score: 12.56
The time is the early seventeenth century, as the quarrel between Royalists and Parliamentarians turns toward civil war, and that between Catholics and Protestants leads toward bloody religious tyranny; the place is a town in northern England, set in a grim landscape swept by crop failures, plague and rumors of war, in which rigid Puritans have taken over government and imposed their own rules.
At the center of the novel is John Brigge, the Coroner and a Governor of the town, though not by any means as convinced a zealot as his fellow governors have become.…
Cloud Atlas: A Novel
- 2005 Clarke shortlist
- 2004 Booker shortlist
- 2004 JT Black-Fiction shortlist
- 2004 NBCC–Fiction finalist
- 2004 Nebula nominee
- Score: 30.55
Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Along the way, Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins to treat him for a rare species of brain parasite. Abruptly, the action jumps to Belgium in 1931, where Robert Frobisher, a disinherited bisexual composer, inveigles his way into the household of an infirm maestro who has a beguiling wife and a nubile daughter. From there we jump to the West Coast in the 1970s and a troubled reporter named Luisa Rey, who stumbles…
Psychoraag: A Novel
- 2004 JT Black-Fiction shortlist
- Score: 6.54
It’s midnight in Glasgow as DJ Zaf presents Radio Chandni’s last ever programme. The playlist features songs from the soundtracks of romantic old Indian films, Beatles’ and Stranglers’ classics and the music of Kula Shaker and ADF. As his broadcast goes out, Zaf’s thoughts and memories unfold—a battered black Ford Popular car toiling its way from Lahore to Britain; a shiny blue Kawasaki motorbike flashing through the Scottish countryside; an ex-lover who blames him for all the crap in her life; a fuck-off-we’re-finished note from his white girlfriend; a mother…
