CALGARY’S FERGUSON CAPTURES GILLER
Calgary’s Will Ferguson, one of Canada’s preeminent humorists, and a three-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, is the winner of this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Ferguson’s tightly plotted literary thriller 419, which explores the Byzantine world of email scams, taking the reader from the streets of Calgary to the back alleys of Lagos, is perhaps the most populist book to be awarded Canada’s most prestigious literary prize.
He receives $50,000 for winning the Giller, which was awarded at a gala ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton in Toronto on Tuesday night.
The Canadian publishing industry gathered in the midst of a storm — both figuratively and literally. The past week saw the collapse of independent Vancouver press Douglas & McIntyre — which just two years ago printed copies of Johanna Skibsrud’s Giller Prizewinning novel The Sentimentalists after its origi- nal publisher, Gaspereau Press, couldn’t keep up with demand — and the news that industry giants Penguin and Random House will soon merge into one (419 is published by Viking, an imprint of Penguin).
Additionally, the remnants of hurricane Sandy, which pummelled the northeastern United States on Monday night, were forecast to reach Toronto, though prize director Elana Rabinovitch vowed “the show must go on” earlier in the day.
Yet it was likely nothing could detract from Ferguson’s victory. The 48-year-old Calgarian is the author of 10 books in all, ranging from fiction (Happiness; Spanish Fly) to humour (Why I Hate Canadians; Canadian Pie) to travelogues (Beyond Belfast; Hitching Rides with Buddha).
The other finalists for this year’s prize were Kim Thuy for her novel Ru, translated from the French by Sheila Fischman, a spare, meditative exploration of a young girl’s life in war-torn Vietnam and struggles in 1970s Quebec; Russell Wangersky for his short story collection Whirl Away; Alix Ohlin for her novel Inside, a multi-faceted study of how tragedy and memory echo throughout the years; and Nancy Richler for her novel The Imposter Bride, about a woman searching for a missing mother who wasn’t exactly who she appeared to be. They each receive $5,000.
Ferguson was chosen by a jury of Canadian publisher and writer Anna Porter, Russian-American satirist and novelist Gary Shteyngart, and Irish writer Roddy Doyle. In total, the jury considered 142 books from 51 publishers from across the country.
The Giller Prize was established in 1994 by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife, the literary journalist Doris Giller.
Past winners include Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Rohinton Mistry, and, last year, Esi Edugyan.