Trinidad born André Alexis has won this year’s Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel Fifteen Dogs. Alexis won this award on Tuesday night at a ceremony which was held at Toronto’s Ritz-Carlton hotel.
The prize, which is worth $100,000 Canadian ($482,000 TT), plus potentially more in book sales, is generally regarded as Canada’s most distinguished literary award.
“I didn’t think that I was going to win it. I never think that I’m going to win anything. My own feeling is that if you get too absorbed in thinking about winning and losing, then you get disappointed if you lose and you get too weird if you win. I like to keep myself on an even keel,” he said.
Fifteen Dogs is about what it means to be human. Two Gods, Hermes and Apollo, make a bet about human happiness. They grant 15 dogs staying at a veterinary clinic the power of human consciousness. The dogs instantly become divided between those who prefer their old dog ways and those who want to take advantage of their newfound increased intelligence.
Alexis, who also won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize last week, has now earned two of Canada’s three major fiction awards.
Alexis, 58, was born in Trinidad, raised in Ottawa and now lives in Toronto. Last month Marlon James, a Jamaican national who now resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota, won the Booker prize for his novel Seven Killings. The Booker Prize is considered Britain’s most prestigious literary award.
Source: The Globe and Mail, Canada