Anne Fine's latest book for older children, The Road of Bones has been shortlisted for the 2007 Carnegie Medal. Anne has won this award twice before, in 1993 for Flour Babies and in 1990 for Goggle-Eyes. The judges said:
Set in a totalitarian state, this is a brave and uncompromising novel. In spite of dealing with brutality in society, it is never negative and it will have political resonance for young people. Incredibly well written, the author stands back enough to allow her characters space to reflect on their actions.
The Carnegie Medal is awarded by the CILIP: the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, the UK librarians' professional body. Meetings are held around the country to decide which titles to nominate. Specialist groups and individual members of CILIP also send in their nominations. This year 38 titles were nominated, from which the shortlist of six was chosen.
It's often said that the it's the book who chooses the writer, not the other way round.
That's certainly true in this case. I was sitting in bed on a warm night in Melbourne, reading Gulag, the magisterial book by Anne Applebaum on the Russian prison camps. She was telling of how, every now and again, two prisoners might persuade a naive third prisoner - preferably a still chubby third prisoner - to join them in an escape. Little did the poor sap realise that his role, through the bleak and all but hopeless trek across hundreds of miles of frozen wastes, was that of a sort of walking larder. Behind his back, the two original plotters might even refer to their future victim as 'the meat'.
Of course it gave me the shudders. But at that very moment, for reasons I still can't analyse, I knew I was going to write The Road of Bones.
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; it is now also available in a paperback edition.
Read more about The Road of Bones.
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Anne Fine writes books for all ages: here's more about her books for younger children and middle children. She writes books for adults, too.
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