Eleanor Catton has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for English-language fiction for her novel The Luminaries (McClelland & Stewart) which is the second big win for the author following the Man Booker Prize in October.
The novel is set in New Zealand in the 1860s during the gold rush and involves three unsolved crimes that link a dozen men. Catton who received $25000 for the win was up against Joseph Boyden’s The Orenda Colin McAdam’s A Beautiful Truth Shyam Selvadurai’s The Hungry Ghosts and Kenneth Bonert’s The Lion Seeker .
Three Calgary writers were among the finalists in other categories: playwright Meg Braem in the English-language drama category for Blood: A Scientific Romance (Playwrights Canada Press); novelist poet playwright and translator Robert Majzel in the French-to-English language category for For Sure (House of Anansi Press) translated from Pour sûr by France Daigle; and Dominique Perron in the French-language non-fiction category for L’Alberta autophage / Identités mythes et discours du pétrole dans l’Ouest canadien (University of Calgary Press).
The Governor General’s Literary Awards are funded and administered by the Canada Council for the Arts and are awarded in English and French in seven categories: fiction poetry drama non-fiction children’s literature (text and illustration) and translation. The complete list of winners is online at ggbooks.canadacouncil.ca .
