Author Lauren Beukes is an author of several titles including Moxyland, Zoo City and The Shining Girls. Her second book Zoo City which was published in 2010 was the novel that won the Arthur C Clark Prize for science fiction in 2011.
The Arthur C Clark is the most prestigious award for science fiction in Britain originally established by a grant from Sir Arthur C. Clarke to promoting science fiction. So you can imagine how chuffed some of us that South African Beukes had gone home with the top honours in that year.
For those who write for prize money (I see you) the prize money isn’t the highest. It had been £1000 since the prize started in 1987 but was increased to UK£2001 in 2001 as a gesture to the movie 2001: A space odyssey. The price has since been growing by £1 to reflect the year so this year should be expected to be UK£2014.
Lauren Beukes is in the running for the 2014 prize for her book The Shining Girls which was published by HarperCollins last year. The book, which is quite good, is about a serial killer dude who goes around offing young women over different time periods in time in a time machine “House” and the one who escaped to stop him. That’s a simple recap so I really have to review it for this blog soonish.
The book which was very recently bought out by the Leonardo Dicaprio TV company has been listed as one of the books which could go away with the big prize when it is announced later in the year. Lets hope our Lauren brings back the gong.
