Marina Warner to receive Truman Capote Award Thursday

Marina Warner will receive the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin in a public event at 4 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 14, in the Senate Chamber of the Old Capitol on the University of Iowa campus. Warner will be honored for “Stranger Magic: Charmed States and the Arabian Nights,” published by Harvard University Press.

The $30,000 award - the largest annual cash prize in English-language literary criticism - is administered for the Truman Capote Estate by the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Thursday's event will include remarks by Warner on literary criticism, followed by a reception.

Body copy ragged right: The book was chosen by an international panel of prominent critics and writers - Terry Castle, Garrett Stewart, Michael Wood, John Kerrigan, Elaine Scarry, and Joyce Carol Oates - each of whom nominated two books. Books of general literary criticism in English, published during the last four years, are eligible for nomination. After reading all the nominated books, each critic ranked the nominees.

“I am very happy to receive this award. It wasn't on my radar that I would be considered; the fact that it was completely unexpected provides additional pleasure,” Warner said in March. “I am familiar with the award, as previous honorees are people I know, including last year's recipient, Elaine Showalter. I am honored and humbled by this accolade.”

“Stranger Magic” is a dazzling history of magical thinking, exploring the power of The Arabian Nights and its impact in the West, and retelling some of its wondrous tales. Magic is not simply a matter of the occult arts, but a whole way of thinking, of dreaming the impossible. As such it has tremendous force in opening the mind to new realms of achievement: imagination precedes the fact. It used to be associated with wisdom, understanding the powers of nature, and with technical ingenuity that could let men do things they had never dreamed of before. Warner's book shows how magic, in the deepest sense, helped to create the modern world, and how profoundly it is still inscribed in the way we think today.