The $50,000 ScotiaBank Giller Prize for Fiction was awarded tonight to Will Ferguson for his novel 419. The Scotiabank Giller Prize is Canada’s most distinguished literary prize, awarded annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English.

This year’s jury made this citation about Ferguson and 419:
“Will Ferguson’s 419 points in the direction of something entirely new: the Global Novel. It is a novel emotionally and physically at home in the poverty of Lagos and in the day-to-day of North America. It tells us the ways in which we are now bound together and reminds us of the things that will always keep us apart. It brings us the news of the world far beyond the sad, hungry faces we see on CNN and CBC and far beyond the spreadsheets of our pension plans. Ferguson is a true travel writer, his eye attuned to the last horrible detail. He is also a master at dialogue and suspense. It is tempting to put 419 in some easy genre category, but that would only serve to deny its accomplishment and its genius.”

You can read my review of 419 here. (So I was wrong. I’m glad.)