Just the facts

2005

• 2 December: Paul Anderson and distinguished Sor Juanista Electa Arenal are in-studio guests in a one-hour segment on Sor Juana broadcast nationally and in Puerto Rico from the New York affiliate of Spanish-language PBS. The program included also a segment with celebrated Mexican writer Carmen Boullosa.
• 28 November: The director of Hamburg's Katholische Akademie presents, in Rome, a copy of the German edition of Hunger's Brides to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI. In his most recent previous posting, the former Cardinal Ratzinger served as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a present-day off-shoot of the Inquisition. We'll keep you posted.
• 31 August: BBC Radio 4 places Hunger's Brides on the shortlist for the 2005 Man Booker Prize! Unfortunately, only the Man Booker judging panel gets to do that (and since Hunger's Brides was not picked for the longlist, and since, additionally, the shortlist is not to be announced for another week, this may have been a bit of a BBC snafu). Aw.... To be clear then: Hunger's Brides has not been shortlisted for the 2005 Man Booker. Or longlisted for it either. The author claims that the only award that he has set his sights on is the Orange Prize for Fiction.
• 31 August: Introducing a piece on Hunger's Brides produced by John Sutherland, chair of the Man Booker 2005 judges -- who, through the magic of radio, appeared to be in the studio -- Kirsty Lang, host of BBC Radio 4's "Front Row," announced to a startled world that Hunger's Brides was on the 2005 Man Booker shortlist. Sutherland did not correct her -- revealing, in our view, subliminal second thoughts -- but he did go on to do a segment on Hunger's Brides. "Gripping ... a page turner ... has a chance at immortality..." And also much too long for today's busy people in a fast-paced world. Odd position for the legendarily learned Mr. Sutherland to take, after citing long masterpieces by Cervantes, Richardson, George Eliot, and pointing out that our preference for the short novel is a relatively recent fad. One is left to presume long books such as War and Peace, Remembrance of Things Past, Middlemarch, Clarissa and Don Quixote would not have received serious consideration for this year's Man Booker. [A note on this link to the BBC program: At the moment the clip can be found on the "listen to previous editions" page of "Front Row." Click on Wednesday's show, and once the audio page loads, advance the player to about the 24-minute mark.]
• 24 August: After the front-page feature in the New York Times Arts section of August 23rd, our website is temporarily blocked by the domain host for exceeding bandwidth: 12,000 hits in 3 hours, almost 1 per second. Within 6 hours Hunger's Brides climbs to #21 on the Amazon.com sales list. Though it must be said that it didn't stay there very damn long. Web service restored within 24 hours (oh yeah, ya gotta buy that extra bandwidth).
• 23 August: New York Times Arts section gives the book a front-page photo, full profile and amusing image-gallery presenting Hunger's Brides beside other objects of similar weight: 6-pack of Budweiser, a quarter of a watermelon, etc.
• 9 August: U.S. independent booksellers association BookSense makes Hunger's Brides a September pick.
• 15 June: Hunger's Brides receives starred reviews from the first two U.S. publications to cover the book. ("Highly recommended." — Library Journal. "A Da Vinci Code for the literate..." — Kirkus Reviews.) Click for more reviews.
• 2 June: Pendo Verlag in Germany builds its maiden catalogue around Hunger's Brides — cover, multiple-page spreads, and a CD-audio insert featuring readings in German from the novel.
• 1 June: The U.S. Library Journal gives Hunger's Brides a starred review.
• 15 May: Writer's Guild awards its prize for novel of the year to Hunger's Brides.
• 29 April: Publishing News in the UK profiles Hunger's Brides.
• 7 April: Hunger's Brides is shortlisted for a Georges Bugnet Award for novel of the year by the Writer's Guild of Alberta.
• 30 March: Two Calgary novelists join V.S. Naipaul and Hari Kunzru on the list of Kiriyama Prize 2005 Notable Books. Brahma's Dream by Shree Ghatage and Hunger's Brides by Paul Anderson were the Canadian books of fiction cited in this year's edition of the distinguished prize open to works published in countries on the Pacific Rim. Authors of previous Kiriyama Prize notable books have included Mario Vargas Llosa, Kenzaburo Oe, and Haruki Murakami.
• 26 March: Hunger's Brides is named as a finalist for the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.
• 23 March: Paul Anderson is awarded a Paul Fleck Fellowship by the Banff Centre for the Arts.
• 25 February: As part of the Banff Centre's International Literary Translation program, Anderson has been invited to join translators from around the world engaged in translating from Hunger's Brides and the books of other Canadian writers including Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Joseph Boyden and Yann Martel.
• 15 February: Hunger's Brides is shortlisted for a Commonwealth Writer's Prize.
• 1 January: Pages on Kensington, Canada's independent bookseller of the year (1999 & 2003) ranked Hunger's Brides, released in September, its #4 bestseller for 2004.

2004

• 15 December: The author is invited to read from Hunger's Brides at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August of 2005.
• 10 December: CBC posts its top picks for holiday-season reads: Alice Munro's Runaway and Hunger's Brides.
• 6 December: Pendo Verlag, now headed by European publishing titan Christian Strasser, secures German rights to Hunger's Brides. Plans are to have an edition out by the fall of 2005.
• 30 October: Hunger's Brides reaches #1 in the Calgary Herald compilation of the city's bestelling books in hardcover.
• 28 October: Constable & Robinson marks its return to a full slate of literary fiction with the acquisition of rights to publish Hunger's Brides in the U.K. Other recent acquisitions by commissioning editor Becky Hardie, formerly of Granta and Bloomsbury: The Corporation, by Joel Bakan; The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, by Greg Palast.
• 6 October: Hunger's Brides opens the week at #9 nationally, on the MacLean's magazine bestseller list.
• 27 September: Paul Anderson is invited to read from Hunger’s Brides for Colgate University’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies program.
• 25 September: Carroll & Graf, part of the Avalon Publishing Group and now under the direction of editor-in-chief Philip Turner, has committed to publish Hunger's Brides in the U.S. Other recent acquisitions: Shake Hands with the Devil, by Lt. Gen. Romeo Dallaire. Publishers of Joyce Carol Oates, Camilla Gibb.
• News pending on the Serbian publisher Rubikon.

Foreign rights

The list of countries that will be publishing Hunger's Brides

Canada: Random House of Canada (fall 2004)

United States: Carroll & Graf (spring 2005)

United Kingdom: Constable & Robinson (spring 2005)

Germany: Pendo Verlag (fall 2005)

Serbia: Rubikon (2006)

Awards & honours

Kiriyama Prize Notable Book

Winner of Georges Bugnet Award for the Novel

Finalist for a Commonwealth Writer's Prize

W.O. Mitchell Prize finalist

Paul Fleck Fellowship, Banff Centre for the Arts