BOOKS PUBLISHED BY Scots house Birlinn and by Portobello are in contention for the £10,000 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, awarded annually to "a book of the highest literary merit - fiction, non-fiction or poetry, best evoking the spirit of a place".
In addition to Calum's Road by Roger Hutchinson (Birlinn) and Portrait with Keys by Ivan Vladislavic (Portobello), Penguin Ireland is also represented with Tom Robinson's Connemara. The other titles are Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men (Viking), which was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker and for this year's Commonwealth Writers Prize, Gillian Tindall's The House by the Thames (Chatto) and Chimamanda Ngozo Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate).