Andrew Crumey scoops £60,000 prize
Quantum physics, telepathy and a young boy who embarks on a space
mission….welcome to
Sputnik Caledonia, Newcastle writer Andrew Crumey’s
work-in-progress which has scooped this year’s Northern Rock Foundation
Writer’s Award, the largest in the UK, with a prize of £60,000.
Andrew is one of Britain’s most interesting and original writers whose
academic training as a PhD in theoretical physics has provided rich
material for his literary work to date with its recurring questioning
of the boundaries between reality and fantasy.
The prize, which is only available to previously published authors
living and working in the North East and Cumbria, allows its recipient
to give up the day job and live on a ‘salary’ of £20,000 a year for a
three-year period. Now in its fifth year, the Award last year went to
poet Gillian Allnutt and was previously awarded to Anne Stevenson,
Julia Darling and Tony Harrison.
Andrew’s previous novels
Mobius Dick (2004) and
Mr Mee (2000), amongst
others, have already won praise from literary luminaries such as
Jonathan Coe, Fay Weldon and Michael Holroyd and been shortlisted for
the literary world’s most prestigious awards and translated worldwide.
A characteristic of his work is its intellectual playfulness,
surrealist structuring and content. With his entry for the Award, his
current work-in-progress Sputnik Caledonia, the author has departed
from his usual style adopting a much more linear approach to the
narrative which incorporates a coming-of-age story within a
wide-ranging novel of ideas.
The story centres on the life of a young boy, Robert Coyle, growing up
in 1970s central Scotland. He daydreams about becoming an astronaut,
while his father, a socialist trade union official with utopian ideals,
inhabits a different kind of fantasy. As we follow Robert into
adolescence, reality and imagination meld. The setting changes to an
imaginary communist Scotland, where Robert finds himself involved in a
space mission to explore a newly discovered world.
Andrew explains where the idea for the book came from:
"I'm a child of the sixties, and I remember what it was like growing up
with the fear of nuclear war, the belief that space tourism was just
around the corner, and the sense that the world was split between two
irreconcilable ideologies. I wanted to write a book based partly on my
own childhood memories and also bringing in political and scientific
ideas, but I couldn't quite find the unifying theme I was looking for.
Then I spent a while researching ways in which writers and thinkers
have responded to science throughout history. Among others I read
Engels and Lenin, Goethe, the Dalai Lama - quite a mixed bag. What
surprised and excited me was that all these people, in very different
ways, took a holistic view of nature. You can have people at completely
opposite ends of the political, ideological or philosophical spectrum,
and they're basically saying the same thing - everything is connected.
That's the theme of my book: it branches off into fantastic realms, but
the core idea is that all these varieties of experience are part of a
single story, the search for wholeness."
With his dual career in physics and literature Andrew is in a unique
position to comment on the "two cultures" of art and science, and the
current widespread interest in bridging the gap between them:
"There has always been a very fertile interplay - Dante based
The
Divine Comedy on the accepted cosmology of his day, and Voltaire wrote
a book about gravity. Increasingly, though, our culture becomes
specialised, compartmentalised and divorced from the material world - a
great many people can't even cook; the night sky disappears in a haze
of streetlights. People think science is something done by people in
white coats looking through microscopes - they feel alienated from it.
And art has acquired its own specialists too. But all these activities
are about life, and how we look at the world, and I think it's great
that there are so many people who want to escape from compartmentalised
thinking towards something more interconnected."
The judging panel consisted of literary critic and author DJ Taylor,
novelist Maggie Gee and award-winning poet Don Paterson who selected
Andrew’s work as a clear winner despite the international stature of
several other entrants. Fiona Ellis, director of the Northern Rock
Foundation, commented:
“The judges were unanimous in their praise for Andrew’s work to date
noting its originality and breadth of subject matter. It’s a heady
mixture of reality, fantasy and exoticism making for novels which can
be read on many levels and by a wide audience of readers. Despite
Sputnik Caledonia’s many serious themes it’s a very accessible and
entertaining read.
Andrew’s literary stature is already established and hopefully the
prize will allow him the time to focus on writing full time which is
certain to lead to exciting and valuable new works. He is an extremely
deserving winner and a writer with a great career ahead.”
Andrew who is currently literary editor of
Scotland on Sunday has lived
in Newcastle upon Tyne since 1992 which qualifies him to enter the
Northern Rock Foundation’s literary competition which is only available
to previously published writers living and working in the north east
and Cumbria.
The award is unique in as much as it does not operate on a shortlist
basis, thus publicly pitting writer against writer, nor does it seek
the involvement of celebrity judges.
Andrew’s own approach to his work has also a hint of the renaissance
man about it with his ability to seamlessly cross disciplines between
science, culture, political theory and humour. He commented:
“It has become increasingly popular to think in narrow bands. But it’s
wrong to think of the worlds of science, culture and politics being
somehow divorced from one another, they all inform each other and
impact on us as individuals.
“It would be fantastic to think that other regions of the UK could
benefit from similar prizes. I feel extremely honoured to have won and
I hope the work I eventually produce will repay the faith and support I
have been shown.”
The Award will be handed over at a ceremony at Newcastle upon Tyne’s
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Arts on Thursday 30th March at 6pm.
-ends-
For more information about the Award contact either Tanya Garland or Kaye Jemmeson at Cool Blue on 01642 351011 or by email on
tanya.garland@coolbluebrand.com or kaye.jemmeson@coolbluebrand.com
