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Canadian author wins Commonwealth writers' prize

18/05/2008

Canadian writer Lawrence Hill has been named the winner of the best book award as part of the annual Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

Hill's novel The Book of Negroes claims a cheque for £10,000 as well as an audience with the head of the Commonwealth, Her Majesty the Queen.

Presented by the Commonwealth Foundation, the prize is a yearly honour offered to fiction written in English by established and new writers, which take sometimes localised concerns to a global level and helps to build boundaries between cultures.

And having examined the story of 18th century Africans who were forced into slavery in the Americas, Hill's novel was chosen to follow in the footsteps of Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy, Louis de Bernieres' Captain Corelli's Mandolin and Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang to claim the best book award.

"It was both intimidating and exhilarating to write the novel in the voice of an 18th Century African woman, Aminata," Hill explained.

"I thought of her as my own daughter and gave her the name of my eldest child, in order to love her sufficiently to lift her off the page."

He added: "As a Canadian novelist, with the usual challenges that writers in small markets, it is thrilling to receive the prize and the opportunity that it presents."

As well as attending an audience with the Queen, Hill will also meet with Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma at the Commonwealth's headquarters in Marlborough House as well as giving a reading from his book at the Foyle's bookstore in London.

Bangladeshi writer Tahmima Anam, a contributing editor at the New Statesman, was awarded the best first book award for her debut novel A Golden Age.

Anam said she was "honoured and humbled to be the first ever Bangladeshi winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize".

"I wrote A Golden Age because I wanted the story of the Bangladesh war to reach an international audience," she continued.

"It is a story of great tragedy, but also represents a moment of hope and possibility for my sometimes troubled country."