MacIntyre, Atwood on list for IMPAC Dublin award

Linden MacIntyre's The Bishop's Man and Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood have been named to the long list for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

There were 15 Canadians on the massive 162-book long list for the award, which comes with a prize of 100,000 ($137,000 Cdn).

Nominations are made by libraries around the world, and Canadian libraries are active participants.

The Bishop's Man, which won the Giller Prize in 2009, had nominations from libraries in Winnipeg, Calgary, Ottawa and Saint John. It is about a priest within the Catholic Church who suffers a crisis of faith over how he coveredup cases of sexual abuse.

The Year of the Flood, Atwood's followup to Oryx and Crake got multiple nominations from libraries in Toronto, Pittsburgh and Germany. It is set among a strange religious sect in a post-apocalyptic world.

Other Canadian contenders:

• The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award in 2009.
• Waiting for Columbusby Thomas Trofimuk.
• Half Worldby Hiromi Goto.
• The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon, which won the Rogers Writers' Trust Award.
• Come, Thou Tortoiseby Jessica Grant.
• Galore by Michael Crummey.
• Under This Unbroken Sky by Shandi Mitchell.
• The Disappeared by Kim Echlin.
• February by Lisa Moore.
• No PlaceStrange by Diana Fitzgerald Bryden.
• Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom by Marie-Claire Blais.
• The Game of Opposites by Norman Labrecht.
• Breaking Lorca by Giles Blunt.

The eclectic nomination list ranged from former musician Nick Cave's The Death of Bunny Munro to Man Booker winner Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Bestseller Dan Brown has a nomination for The Last Symbol and Peter Carey for Parrott and Olivier in America.

Books in 14 different languages that have English translations also are contenders for the award.

The awards are sponsored by the city of Dublin and Dublin's public libraries.

Nancy Huston, the Canadian-born author who is now based in France, is on the jury with John Boyne, Susan Bassnett, Michael Hofman and Tessa Hadley.

The short list will be made public on April 12, 2011 and the winner on June 15.