Ross King's The Judgment of Paris has won the 2006 Governor General's Award in non-fiction today. It's a study of the battle between impressionists and traditionalists in the art world of the late 19th century. I haven't read it, but it's been saluted for the narrative drive King creates around the figures of Edouard Manet the impressionist and Ernest Meissonier the traditionalist. King's earlier work Brunelleschi's Dome was also highly regarded.
King's a Saskatchewan boy, but has long lived, worked, and studied in Britain, and his primary publishers are American and British. I always feel a little pang to see awards go to books and writers that are not here and can't much engage with the reading and writing community in Canada. But a jury's job is to pick the best eligible book every time. This year King wrote that book, so he's entitled. Recall that the Yanks gave Carol Shields a Pulitzer when she had long gone Canadian on them.
The most "historical" work on the GG shortlist this year was Afua Cooper's The Hanging of Angelique. Other nominees were Suzanne Reber and Robert Renard for Starlight Tour, Christine Weisenthal for The Half-Lives of Pat Lowther, and Michael Strangelove for Empire of Mind. Salute them all, and also the hardworking jurors (been there!) Winnipeg writer Allan Levine, Montreal translator Fred Reed (himself a nominee in translation), and First Nations writer Lee Maracle.
