Books & Bookmen
n FOR many established writers, April has been the cruellest month. Across the spring shortlists for three awards – the Women’s prizes for fiction and non-fiction and the International Booker prize – the names of only two of the 18 finalists, Elizabeth Strout and Neneh Cherry, might elicit the odd nod of recognition (in Cherry’s case it’s likely to be as a musician rather than as the autobiographer up for the non-fiction award).