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Contest Announced to Complete Graham Greene's Unfinished Novella

The Strand Magazine has announced that a contest will be held to determine who will complete the unfinished Graham Greene novella The Empty Chair, which for the past year has been serialized in the Strand

“I think we’re very excited to see what comes our way,” Andrew F. Gulli, the managing editor of the Strand said, “As an editor, it’s easy to underestimate the ingenuity of aspiring writers.”

The Empty Chair was discovered in a library by French scholar François Gallix while he was going over Graham Greene’s papers for a research project. The first part of the 23,000 word manuscript was published in the 2009 summer issue of The Strand magazine and generated worldwide publicity and interest not only among Greene fans, but among the reading public. “I think what this proves is that despite being dead for almost twenty years, Greene is very much alive in the conscious of the reading public,” said Frank Simon, the associate publisher of the Strand.

The final part of the story will be published in the holiday issue of the Strand Magazine. “In our holiday issue we have a very short chapter five written by Greene,” Gulli said, “Then the novella ends rather abruptly, immediately following chapter five, we’ll publish the concluding chapter penned by winner of the contest.” Click here for contest rules

 

Les Pockell: A man for all seasons
When I heard yesterday evening that my friend Les died on Monday night, I couldn't believe that I'd never see him again. Les was one of those unique people, in an average lifetime you're lucky if you meet one or two of them and you're blessed if you can consider them friends. It's hard to describe Les, I don't even think that Hemingway could do him justice, but some of the words that come to me are, dynamic, boundless energy, warmth, laughter, generous, knowledge, candor, and a great sense of humor.

I'd often look forward to visiting New York and having lunch with Les and our mutual friend Susan Richman. Our last lunch was a year ago, at Persephone a tiny Greek restaurant. Les was ill, you could tell, but he lost none of his vitality or energy. His laughter and energy took the tiny restaurant over and I realized that he was a one of a kind.

 Andrew F. Gulli

And the winners are...
Michael Connelly took the top prize for Best Novel for Nine Dragons (Little, Brown) and Josh Bazell and Bryan Gruley shared the best first novel award for Beat the Reaper (Little, Brown) and Starvation Lake (Touchstone). The winners were announced at an invitation only cocktail party in Manhattan, by bestselling author Jonathan Santlofer.

Set in Hong Kong, Nine Dragons is Connelly’s 14th Harry Bosch book and has garnered rave reviews for being one of Connelly’s best novels to date. "Considering that it comes from Strand Magazine and the pedigrees of those on the judging panel, I am blown away by receiving this award, it is truly very special to me,” Connelly said after receiving the award.

Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell, blends humor with a darkly inventive thriller and has been translated into several languages. The Wall Street Journal’s Bryan Gruley, author of Starvation Lake, has earned comparisons to Dennis Lehane and has been hailed by critics as one of the most promising debut novelists of 2009.

Otto Penzler introduced the lifetime achievement award honoree Elmore Leonard. Leonard who has been described as the greatest living American crime writer has authored scores of novels, screenplays and short stories. Leonard thanked the judges and paid tribute to many of the writers who influenced him.

Best Novel:
Nine Dragons by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company)
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (Ballantine Books)Life Sentences by Laura Lippman (William Morrow)
The Renegades by T. Jefferson Parker (Dutton)
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (Riverhead Books)

Best First Novel
 Beat the Reaper by Josh Bazell (Little, Brown and Company)
The Manual of Detection by Jedediah Berry (Penguin Press)
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick (Algonquin Books)
Starvation Lake by Bryan Gruley (Touchstone)
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke (Harper)

"It was great to have many of the nominees in attendance," said Andrew F. Gulli, the managing editor of The Strand. "And to have Elmore Leonard who provided the inspiration to so many of these writers at the awards was wonderful."

This year's judges included a panel of reviewers from Time Magazine, The Washington Post, LA Times, The Florida Sun Sentinel, The Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian and The Chicago Tribune.

Left to right: Josh Bazell, Otto Penzler, Elmore Leonard, Bryan Gruley, Laura Lippman, and Michael Connelly (Credit: Alan Jacobson)

More photos of the awards

We'd like to thank the judges for their dedication and hard work, Bruce De Silva (Associated Press), Julia Keller (Chicago Tribune), Ron Charles (Washington Post), Lev Grossman (Time), Oline Cogdill (Florida Sun Sentinel), Patrick Anderson (AP), David Montgomery (LA Times), Paul Harris (Guardian), Jeff Baker (Oregonian) and Tom Nolan (Wall Street Journal)

After ten years, the first issue of the Strand is available
Due to interest from subscribers and collectors the Strand is releasing a limited number of copies of our first issue. For years, the first issue has been a hot item among collectors fetching as much as $250 per copy. For more information about the first issue which featured fiction by Henry Slesar and James Sallis visit our back issues page.

Michael Connelly short story will appear in The Strand
One of the great masters of the detective novel pens a Harry Bosch mystery, that will tantalize and intrigue fans.

Surprise Revealed: Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot in The Strand
Reuters broke the story this week, that The Strand will be publishing "The Incident of the Dog's Ball" in our holiday issue. The story was found in the attic of the Christie family home and this will mark the first time in 34 years, that a work featuring Hercule Poirot has appeared in the United States.

A surprise for the Tenth Anniversary Issue of the Strand...
As strange as it sounds, it's been ten years since the first issue of The Strand was published and we've enjoyed every minute. In our tenth year we've marked this milestone by publishing unpublished gems by masters such as Mark Twain, P.G. Wodehouse, and Graham Greene. We have something else up our sleeve for our holiday issue that will surprise and intrigue our readers...stay tuned.

The Strand to Serialize a Graham Greene Novel

The Strand will publish an unfinished early work of Graham Greene in five parts. The first part of The Empty Chair will appear in the summer issue of the Strand. “We at The Strand are very discerning about what we publish,” said Andrew F. Gulli, the Managing Editor of The Strand. “And if we had a chance to publish a recently unearthed work of a great writer, we’d only publish it if it was a work of fine quality. What was tremendous about The Empty Chair is that despite being an early work of Greene, it’s a fantastic piece of fiction which is representative of Greene and we would have published it even if it was submitted by an unknown writer.”

The manuscript was unearthed by Sorbonne scholar François Gallix at the University of Texas in Austin. Gallix along with a colleague, had the painstaking task of transcribing five chapters which were handwritten by Greene when he was just twenty-two.

“In the last issue, we published a never before published short story by Mark Twain and to me that was special,” Gulli said. “However, to me Greene is greatest writer of the 20th century, his prose, style, and dialogue are unmatched and to have Greene in The Strand with a murder mystery is undoubtedly the highlight of my career.”

News reports:
Unfinished Greene novel serialised in magazine (Reuters)
Unfinished Graham Greene murder mystery novel discovered Telegraph.co.uk
Long-lost Graham Greene work to be serialized in the Strand Los Angeles Times
Lost Greene novel to be serialised in crime magazine guardian.co.uk
Unfinished Greene mystery found by French academic Independent
Arts, Briefly 'New' Graham Greene Mystery to Be Published New York Times
Authors who came back from the grave Irish Independent
Publishers unearth bestsellers from beyond the literary grave Guardian
Our Man in Michigan (WSJ online)

Richard Price and Tom Rob Smith win Strand’s Critics Awards

Richard Price and Tom Rob Smith win The Strand Magazine’s Critics Awards for Best Novel and Best First Novel. The judges were book reviewers from several of the nation's top daily newspapers.

The Strand Magazine has announced the winners of the 2008 Strand Magazine Critics Awards. Richard Price took the top prize for Best Novel for Lush Life and Tom Rob Smith won for Best First Novel for Child 44.  The winners were announced at an invitation only cocktail party in Manhattan, by bestselling author Jonathan Santlofer. Price and Smith thanked the judges and paid tribute to their fellow nominees.

Richard Price earned rave reviews for his meticulously researched crime novel Lush Life which was set in New York’s Lower Eastside and explores themes from crime to class inequality, and the struggle to survive in a violent environment. Tom Rob Smith’s first novel Child 44, hit the New York Times bestseller list and became an overnight sensation, the novel is loosely based on a true story about a chilling serial killer in Communist Russia.

Best Novel:
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (Little, Brown and Company)
Master of the Delta by Thomas H. Cook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly (Little, Brown and Company)
Lush Life by Richard Price (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Hollywood Crows by Joseph Wambaugh (Little, Brown and Company)

Best First Novel:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (Knopf)
City of the Sun by David Levien (Doubleday)
A Cure for Night by Justin Peacock (Doubleday)
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith (Grand Central Publishing)
A Carrion Death by Michael Stanley (Harper)

“Lush Life and Child 44 were worthy efforts by Richard Price and Tom Rob Smith,” said Andrew F. Gulli, the managing editor of The Strand. "The voting was so close this year, that the winners and nominees were separated by only a handful of votes."

This year's judges included Otto Penzler, Dennis Drabelle of The Washington Post, David Ulin of the LA Times, Lev Grossman of Time Magazine, Carol Memmott of USA Today, Maureen Corrigan of NPR, and Bruce DeSilva of the Associated Press.

A lifetime achievement award was given posthumously to English author John Mortimer which was accepted by his wife Penny Mortimer

Click Here for Photos

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The Strand magazine will publish mystery book reviews from Publisher's Weekly in our weekly e-mail newsletter. That means that in addition to our regular content in our newsletter, subscribers will receive three-four mystery book reviews a week in their inbox.
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