The prize is worth $100,000, in Canadian currency.
By Raif Karerat
Trinidad-born author Andre Alexis has was awarded the Giller Prize for his novel “Fifteen Dogs.”
The prize, which is worth $100,000 Canadian ($75,000 U.S.), plus potentially more in book sales, is generally regarded as Canada’s pre-eminent literary award.
“Fifteen Dogs” was praised by jury members as an “insightful and philosophical meditation on the nature of consciousness,” according to The Record, a Toronto-based publication.
“I didn’t think that I was going to win it,” he said backstage after accepting the award, according to The Globe and Mail. “I never think that I’m going to win anything. My own feeling is that if you get too absorbed in thinking about winning and losing, then you get disappointed if you lose and you get too weird if you win. I like to keep myself on an even keel.”
Alexis, who also won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize last week, has now earned two of the country’s three major fiction awards.
The other finalists were Rachel Cusk for “Outline;” Vancouver’s Anakana Schofield for her avant-garde novel “Martin John;” Quebec writer Samuel Archibald for his debut collection of short fiction, “Arvida,” translated from the French by Donald Winkler; and Montreal’s Heather O’Neill for her short-story collection “Daydreams of Angels.”
They each receive $10,000, and in the the case of “Arvida,” Archibald receives $7,000, while Winkler pocket the rest.
The Giller prize was created in 1994 by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in memory of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.