US travel memoir wins Age Book of the Year Award - The Age
July 4, 2007 - Posted in Articles, Car Rental, Destinations
August 23, 2008
IN THE year of one of the most important presidential elections of recent time, a book that takes the reader around the US to meet ordinary people negotiating life in an extraordinary country has won the 35th Age Book of the Year Award.
recounts his travels on rail and road, and gives a fresh perspective on the world's only superpower through the stories of its citizens he met. As a picture of the US, it is by no means flattering but it is always intelligent, compassionate and readable. The award is worth $20,000. Watson also won the non-fiction prize.
Tim Winton won the fiction award, worth $10,000, for
, his first novel in seven years. It is the first time he has won a Victorian literary prize. J. S. Harry won the $10,000 Dinny O'Hearn poetry prize for
.
The prizes were presented last night at the opening of the Melbourne Writers Festival at the Melbourne Town Hall. It was not unfamiliar territory for Watson — he won the Book of the Year award in 2002 for
, his account of Paul Keating as prime minister.
With his eyes on politics across the Pacific, Watson said he hoped the likely Democrat contender, Barack Obama, would win the November elections but feared his Republican opponent, John McCain, was more likely to.
"I don't think McCain is a particularly bad fellow, but there's no reason to believe he's sufficiently clear of the Bush cabal," he said.
"Their economic policy is the same; their foreign policy is the same. John McCain seems more worldly (than Bush) but he's not different enough to give America any hope."
The non-fiction judges, historian Robyn Annear and biographer Brenda Niall, said Watson was sublimely attuned to subtleties of language, self-delusion and bastardry, his observations ranging from gentle to wry to cut-yourself sharp. "But it is Americans' treasured notion of freedom, forcing itself constantly under Watson's gaze, which shapes his journey's destination," they said.