Murakami out of the running for William Hill award
Alison Flood writing in guardian.co.uk,
Thursday October 30 2008

The award-winning Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has fallen at the second fence in the competition for the William Hill sports book of the year, after failing to make the prize's shortlist, announced this afternoon.

Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - a series of reflections on what he talks about when he talks about running - made it over the first hurdle when the longlist was announced earlier this month, but has been squeezed out of contention by books aimed squarely at the sports fan.Six titles remain in the running for the prize, which comes with a £20,000 cheque and a free £2,000 bet for the winner.

Read Alison's full report including the shortlist at the Guardian online.

Footnote.

The judges' decision does not surprise The Bookman in the slightest as this is not really a sports title and although the author is a master exponent in the fiction field, (he'll win the Nobel Prize for fiction in the next few years I wager), this is non-fiction, a memoir really, and he is not at his best. Read my review from a couple of weeks back.