Two films received seven nominations: The Insider, the true story of a whistle-blower in the tobacco industry, and The Cider House Rules, an adaptation of the John Irving novel set in a New England orphanage.
Much loved yet little read, for almost a century this strange, earnest and inconsolable novel has haunted the fringes of fiction.
But in 1981, the so-called "Pennsylvania edition" (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press) reverted to Dreiser's handwritten first draft, now held in the New York Public Library, and substituted his uncut holograph version as the scholarly text of the novel.
In recent weeks the traditions have found a novel field of play – national politics.
Under expert supervision, you'll take on one of the most demanding tasks any writer can face – to work on creating the first draft of an original novel.
The new film, Porno, would be based on the 2002 novel by Irvine Welsh, which follows his characters – Begbie, Renton (played by Ewan McGregor in the original film), Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller and Spudd (Ewen Bremner) – a decade after their original antics.
Immediately I thought, "If one's good, why not all four?" Hence my first novel, O Father Abraham, How Did You Get So Gladsome?
Booker-shortlisted The Lowland (Bloomsbury) by Jhumpa Lahiri is an elegantly written novel about two brothers growing up in a lowland suburb of south Calcutta in the 1950s and 60s; the younger becomes involved in the Naxalite movement and is killed by the police.
Anthony Marra's debut novel A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Hogarth) is set in war-torn Chechnya.
But my book of the year is Jonathan Buckley's breathtakingly clever novel, Nostalgia (Sort of Books).
