The Guardian is reporting that the winner of this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award is author Jane Rogers. Though the short list included SF stars like China Miéville and Greg Bear, the prestigious award went to a relatively unknown author who’s novel was published by a small press; Sandstone Press.
Jane Rogers’s novel The Testament of Jessie Lamb depicts a future world where the planet has been ravaged by an epidemic called Maternal Death Syndrome, a fatal virus that affects pregnant women. The reader follows the main character, Jessie, as she struggles to become independent of her parents in this bleak future. The book has been compared to the works of Margaret Atwood.
This announcement has not posted yet on the Clarke Awards website, but you can check out the shortlist here.
[News via The Guardian]