Janette Turner Hospital novel ‘Orpheus Lost’ makes Booklist’s Top 30 for the year

Janette Turner Hospital’s latest novel, “Orpheus Lost,” has been named to Booklist’s Top 30 novels of the year.

Hospital, a Carolina Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina, is among good company on the prestigious list. Also included are Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Michael Ondaatje, Ian MacEwan, Ha Jin, Michael Chabon, National Book Award winner Denis Johnson and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright.

Released last October by Harper Collins, the book is a retelling of the Orpheus legend in an age of international terrorism. “Orpheus Lost” also made the American Library Association’s Best 25 Books of the Year. Hospital will deliver the keynote address at the association’s annual convention in Los Angeles in June.

The Booklist honor is the latest literary accolade for Hospital. Her last novel, “Due Preparations for the Plague,” earned Hospital the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Fiction in 2003 and the Davitt Award for Best Crime Novel by an Australian Woman in 2003 by Sisters of Crime, one of Australia’s largest literary societies. Also that year, she was honored with Australia’s Patrick White Award for lifetime literary achievement.

Hospital has written nine novels and four collections of short stories. She directs the popular public lecture series, “Caught in the Creative Act,” which brings top writers to the university to give readings and discuss their writing. This spring Hospital will bring Joyce Carol Oates, Peter Balakian, Francine du Plessix Gray and Salman Rushdie to campus.

Hospital, who grew up in Queensland, Australia, taught at universities in Australia, Canada, England, France and the United States before joining the English department as a Distinguished Writer in Residence, a post previously held by the late James Dickey. In 2003, Hospital was awarded the university’s Russell Research Award for Humanities and Social Sciences, an honor recognizing the most significant faculty contribution for research, publication, teaching and service in a given year.