If you’re looking for an alternative to March Madness (ie, the college basketball tournament), there is a literary tournament going on. It’s called The Morning News Tournament of Books. Powell’s sponsors it. It’s described as: “…an annual battle royale amongst the top novels in ‘literary fiction’ published throughout the year.”

The Tournament is in the middle of the Semifinals right now. Something called the “Zombie Round” is next. I leave it to you to figure out exactly what that is.

In case you’re wondering, the contestants this year were (and I have read exactly one of these):

Half of a Yellow Sun, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
One Good Turn, Kate Atkinson
Arthur and George, Julian Barnes
Brookland, Emily Barton
English, August, Upamanyu Chatterjee
The Lay of the Land, Richard Ford
Pride of Baghdad, Niko Henrichon, Brian K. Vaughan
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Emperor’s Children, Claire Messud
The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, Peter Orner
The Echo Maker, Richard Powers
Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon
Firmin, Sam Savage
Absurdistan, Gary Shteyngart
Alentejo Blue, Monica Ali
Apex Hides the Hurt, Colson Whitehead

Feel free to play along at home.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 8:25 am and is filed under About Authors, About Books, About Contests & Associations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.