{"id":21644,"date":"2026-05-17T19:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T17:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/?p=21644"},"modified":"2026-06-07T14:51:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-07T12:51:53","slug":"the-national-short-story-prize-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/2026\/05\/17\/the-national-short-story-prize-2006\/","title":{"rendered":"The National Short Story Prize 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This is the first collection of what would later become the BBC Short Story Award. The aim is to publish five UK short stories each year to highlight the true value of the genre. The prize is now regarded as highly prestigious.
The 2006 winner is An Anxious Man<\/em> by James Lasdun, which follows a man overwhelmed by financial worries who eventually realises that what truly matters in life is his family, especially his wife and daughter.
The Flyover<\/em> by Rana Dasgupta tells the story of a young man working for a criminal, collecting blackmail money, who is then asked to commit murder. But who is really this man he kills ?
The Safehouse<\/em> by Michel Faber is a strange, dystopian tale of a man who has lost everything and is living as a tramp. One day, he enters a vast building where he is cared for alongside many others, each wearing T-shirts printed with the story of their lives.
The Ebony Hand<\/em> by Rose Tremain follows a woman who devotes herself to caring for her niece in a rural village, while also visiting the girl\u2019s father, who lives in \u201cThe Bin,\u201d the local asylum. She consistently puts others first, until the end, when she finally buys herself the ebony hand she had cared for when working a store.
It was a pleasure to read again William Trevor<\/a>. Men of Ireland<\/em> also centres on a lost man living as a tramp, who returns to his childhood village to ask the priest for money, implying that something troubling happened to him when he was a choirboy.
The one I preferred was “The Safehouse” by Michel Faber. Overall, these are a very engaging and varied set of short stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Victor was given a small room with orange curtains and a view of some water-meadows where an old grey-white bull foraged for grass among kingcups and reeds. Victor said the bull and he were ‘as one’ in their abandonment and loneliness. He said Aviva had held his mind together by cradling his head between her breasts. He announced that the minds of every living being on the earth were held together by a single mortal and precarious thing.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Content<\/strong>
The Flyover – Rana Dasgupta
The Safehouse – Michel Faber
An Anxious Man – James Lasdun
The Ebony Hand – Rose Tremain
Men of Ireland – William Trevor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first collection of what would later become the BBC Short Story Award. The aim is to publish five UK short stories each year to highlight the true value of the genre. The prize is now regarded as highly prestigious.The 2006 winner is An Anxious Man by James Lasdun, which follows a man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[291,293],"tags":[51,124,48],"class_list":["post-21644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-2026","category-challenge-riquiqui-2026","tag-identity","tag-loss","tag-weirdness"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/khaled-nader-1vCQpQJiHIA-unsplash-scaled.jpg?fit=1809%2C2560&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21644"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21822,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21644\/revisions\/21822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redheadwithabrain.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}