The 16th annual Scotiabank Giller Prize, celebrating excellence in Canadian literature, was presented to Linden MacIntyre for his novel, The Bishop’s Man (Random House Canada). The jury described the book:
The Bishop’s Man centres on a sensitive topic – the sexual abuses perpetrated by Catholic priests on the innocent children in their care. Father Duncan, the first person narrator, has been his bishop’s dutiful enforcer, employed to check the excesses of priests and, crucially, to suppress the evidence. But as events veer out of control, he is forced into painful self-knowledge as family, community and friendship are torn apart under the strain of suspicion, obsession and guilt. A brave novel, conceived and written with impressive delicacy and understanding.
MacIntyre is an investigative journalist and co-host of CBC Television’s The Fifth Estate. He has won nine Gemini awards for his broadcast journalism and both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction for his childhood memoir.
The Giller Prize is the largest literary award in Canada. Past winners include M.G. Vassanji, Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, and Rohinton Mistry. This year’s shortlist also included:
- Kim Echlin – The Disappeared (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
- Annabel Lyon – The Golden Mean (Random House Canada)
- Colin McAdam – Fall (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
- Anne Michael – The Winter Vault (McClelland & Stewart)
Each year. the winner receives C$50,000 and each finalist receives C$5,000. Scotiabank, the financial underwriter of the competition for the past five years, announced at the ceremony this week that they will commit to ten more years of sponsorship.
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The 2009 winners of the National Outdoor Book Awards have been announced. The NOBA recognizes books that celebrate the outdoor world. The winners in ten categories include:
- History/Biography – Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America by Douglas Brinkley (Harper)
- Outdoor Literature – Halfway to Heaven by Mark Obmascik (Free Press/Simon & Schuster)
- Design & Artistic Merit – Birds by Lars Jonsson (Princeton University Press)
- Classic – Kayak: The New Frontier by William Nealy (Menasha Ridge Press)
- Children’s – Whistling Wings by Laura Goering (Sylvan Dell Publishing)
- Nature and Environment – Our Living Earth by Yann Arthus-Bertrand (Abrams/Books for Young Readers)
- Natural History – Every Living Thing: Man’s Obsessive Quest to Catalog Life, from Nanobacteria to New Monkeys by Rob Dunn (Smithsonian Books)
- Nature Guidebook – Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America by Roger Tory Peterson (Houghton Mifflin Company)
- Outdoor Adventure Guidebook – Guide to the Green and Yampa Rivers in Dinosaur National Monument by Duwain Whitis and Barbara Vinson (RiverMaps)
- Instructional – Girl on the Rocks: A Woman’s Guide to Climbing with Strength, Grace and Courage by Katie Brown, photos by Ben Moon (Globe Pequot Press/Falcon Guides)
More information on each of these books and the honorable mentions in each category can be found at the NOBA website.
