Ondaatje prize shortlist spans globe from Ireland to Sri Lanka

Finalists for prize honouring books that conjure ‘the spirit of a place’ include poems about rural Ireland and a history of the Sri Lankan civil war

From a poetry collection about rural Ireland to a tour of modern Russia dubbed an “anti-travelogue”, six books have been shortlisted for one of the UK’s more unusual literary prizes: the RSL Ondaatje award, which goes to the book which best evokes “the spirit of a place”.

Worth £10,000, the Ondaatje can be won by fiction, nonfiction or poetry, with judges Kate Adie, Moniza Alvi and Mark Lawson this year selecting one poetry title for their shortlist, Jane Clarke’s The River. Alvi praised Clarke’s “quiet, lucid, subtle poems”, which she said were “nevertheless urgent in their presentation of a farming background in rural Ireland, and the poet’s enduring attachment to it”.