Esi Does It On Winning Book Prizes
Edugyan Wins the Giller Again for Her Novel About A Bajan Slave.
By Stephen Weir
Esi Edugyan has won Canada’s most prestigious fiction book prize again! Earlier this week the young novelist captured the Giller Prize for her new book Washington Black, it is the second time that she has captured the $100,000 award.
She won the prize at a black tie dinner event in Toronto on Monday. The announcement was made in front of nearly 500 members of the publishing, media and arts communities.
Washington Black tells the story of George Washington Black; an eleven-year-old field slave living on a Barbados sugar plantation. From the brutal cane plantations to the icy waters of the Canadian Arctic, from the mud-filled streets of London to the eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black is the tale – inspired by a true story – of a world destroyed by slavery and the search to make it whole again.
Although the book is a work of fiction, the author told the CBC that details about slavery are unfortunately true. “"I was doing a lot of research into the history of slavery in the Caribbean. The acts of brutality described in the novel are things that came directly from history. There's nothing I made up."
"I just have to say that in a climate in which so many forms of truth telling are under siege this feels like a wonderful and important celebration of words," Esi Edugyan said shortly after she learned that she had once again won Canada’s top fiction award.
Esi Edugyan made history in 2011 by being the first Black woman to win the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel Half-Blood Blues. The four other finalists were;
- Patrick deWitt for his novel French Exit,
- Eric Dupont for his novel Songs for the Cold of Heart, translated by Peter McCambridge,
- Sheila Heti for her novel Motherhood,
- Thea Lim for her novel An Ocean of Minutes,
Ms Edugyan is currently Canada’s most successful fiction writer. She has won the Giller twice, was the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the Writer’s Trust Prize and was shortlisted for the world’s leading literature award, the UK’s Man Booker Prize.
Born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, to Ghanaian immigrant parents, Edugyan studied creative writing at the University of Victoria BC. She lives and writes in Victoria, she and her husband poet Steven Price are the parents of a 7-year old child.
