Colum McCann wins IMPAC Dublin Literary Award

Irish writer Colum McCann’s Let The Great World Spin, a novel set in the shadow of Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, has won the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the world’s most lucrative book prizes. The prize is worth €100,000.
Let The Great World Spin, which was published in Canada by HarperCollins, features a sprawling cast, including an Irish priest working in the South Bronx, his brother, a mother who lost her son in the Vietnam War, a strung-out hooker recounting her life story from a prison cell, and a young couple involved in a hit-and-run. The judges called it “a genuinely 21st century novel that speaks to its time but is not enslaved by it.” It also won the 2009 National Book Award for Fiction.
The other books up for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award were Galore, by Canadian author Michael Crummey; The Lacuna, by American author Barbara Kingsolver; The Vagrants, by Chinese-American author Yiyun Li; Ransom, by the Australian author David Malouf; Little Bird of Heaven, by prolific American author Joyce Carol Oates; Jasper Jones, by Australian writer Craig Silvey; Brooklyn, by Irish author Colm Toibín; Love and Summer, by Irish author William Trevor; and After the Fire, a Still, Small Voice, by Australian writer Evie Wyld.
Two of the finalists are former winners: Malouf won the first-ever award in 1996 for Remembering Babylon, while Toibín captured the prize in 2006 for The Master.
The judging panel was composed of Susan Bassnet, a professor of comparative literature at the University of Warwick; authors John Boyne and Tessa Hadley; poet and critic Michael Hofmann; Canadian author Nancy Huston. The panel’s non-voting chair was former judge, and novelist, Eugene R. Sullivan. In total, they considered 162 different novels nominated by 166 library systems from around the world.
Past winners include Michel Houellebecq, Orhan Pamuk, and Gerbrand Bakker, who won last year for The Twin.
Two Canadians have won the prize: Rawi Hage for De Niro’s Game (2008) and Alistair MacLeod for No Great Mischief (2001).