Congratulations to Esi Edugyan whose novel Washington Black was named the 2018 Giller Prize winner!
As many of you may already know, the Shadow Giller jury chose Songs for the Cold of Heart by Eric DuPont as our winner. However, Washington Black was our second choice, so it’s lovely to see such a wonderful book take the prize. If you’re interested in finding out how we arrived at our decision, you can read about it here.
For more information and photos of the event, you can visit the Scotiabank Giller Prize website or the CBC news. You can hear an interview with Esi Edugyan after her win on CBC’s “q” here.
What the jurors had to say about Washington Black: “How often history asks us to underestimate those trapped there. This remarkable novel imagines what happens when a black man escapes history’s inevitable clasp – in his case, in a hot air balloon no less. Washington Black, the hero of Esi Edugyan’s novel is born in the 1800s in Barbados with a quick mind, a curious eye, and a yearning for adventure. In conjuring Black’s vivid and complex world – as cruel empires begin to crumble and the frontiers of science open like astounding vistas – Edugyan has written a supremely engrossing novel about friendship and love and the way identity is sometimes a far more vital act of imagination than the age in which one lives.”
That’s the end of the Giller Prize season for another year. We hope you’ve enjoyed following our Shadow Giller proceedings, reviews and tweets over the past two months. We’ve had a brilliant time doing it and read some wonderful books in the process.
Thanks so much for your support, and we’ll see you again next year!
Tags: 2018 Giller Prize winner, Esi Edugyan, Washington Black
KevinfromCanada 
November 21, 2018 at 1:28 pm |
Brilliant that it was your second choice!
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November 22, 2018 at 12:48 am |
It wasn’t my second choice. I gave my points to Thea Lim; I thought her novel was extraordinary & totally not what I expected when I (reluctantly) picked it up.
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November 22, 2018 at 9:53 am |
Oh, that’s right! Sorry, Kim. My memory failed me!
Thea Lim’s novel was so great, too, wasn’t it? I wasn’t expecting to love it as much as I did!
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March 13, 2019 at 8:22 am |
I have not read this story yet, but I really want to. It sounds very interesting 🙂
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June 22, 2019 at 3:50 am |
Today I finished the 12th and final volume of Anthony Powell’s mega-sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time. It took me eight months to read the series, in part because I wanted to prolong the pleasure, having, after nearly every book, to restrain myself from tearing on to the next one.
Why am I putting this here? Because Kevin had suggested that I read this, ages ago, knowing barely anything of me, solely on the basis of what I had read and liked in the past. And the advice was every bit as sound as I expected it to be.
Thank you, Kevin, for being a voice of wisdom and calm which provided me much reassurance in my younger days. And thank you to Naomi, kimbofo, Mrs. KfC and all others who have kept alive this blog–an invaluable repository of his later work just as much as a living memorial to him–in the years since.
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June 25, 2019 at 2:03 pm |
Thank you so much for sharing this! It’s wonderful to hear from readers who have been following Kevin’s blog over the years!
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