There's a bit of a tradition of novelists picking up non-fiction prizes when they turn to that genre, but if the writing is good, who's to complain? Anyway, last week the journalist Lyndon McIntyre managed to turn the tables by winning the Giller Prize with his detour into fiction, The Bishop's Man. How did novelists feel about that?
Anyway, M.G. Vassanji, the very fine and thoughtful novelist of the intimate aspects of global diasporas, has been given the Governor General's Non-fiction prize for his essay A Place Within: Rediscovering India. The main history title, Randall Hansen's Fire and Fury, remains among the finalists (and Hansen, I have learned, lives and teaches in Toronto, not in London as I previously wrote.
Details on the GGs here.
