articles
November 2, 2000
Canada's Prized Fiction -- updated
by Barbara Fletcher
The winner of the seventh annual Giller Prize,
Canada's biggest prize for fiction, will be revealed tonight at a gala
dinner at Toronto's Four Seasons Hotel.
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GILLER SHORTLIST • Burridge Unbound Alan Cumyn • A Student of Weather Elizabeth Hay • Anil's Ghost Michael Ondaatje • Mercy Among the Children David Adams Richards • Monkey Beach Eden Robinson • The Trade Fred Stenson |
The Giller Prize is awarded annually to the author whose work best exemplifies Canadian writing.
The Shortlisted Books
In Burridge Unbound, Alan Cumyn's sequel to Man of Bone, Bill Burridge returns to Ottawa to build a human rights organization to guard troubled areas of the world.
Elizabeth Hay's A Student of Weather chronicles the lives of two sisters traumatized by the arrival of a man on their quiet Saskatchewan farm in the 1950s.
In Anil's Ghost, Michael Ondaatje presents the story of a young human rights activist who returns to her Sri Lankan homeland to find it in the throes of civil war.
New Brunswick author David Adams Richards's Mercy Among the Children follows the life of a man who makes a pact with God to live a peaceful life -- in exchange for the survival of a child he fears that he may have harmed accidentally.
In Monkey Beach, Eden Robinson takes readers on a search for Sasquatches in a coming-of-age novel set in Kitimat, B.C.
Alberta's Fred Stenson writes about love and misfortune during the heyday of Canada's fur trade in the 1820s in The Trade.
More About the Prize
The 2000 Giller Prize jury comprises multiple award-winning Canadian authors Alistair MacLeod (The Lost Salt Gift of Blood, As Birds Bring Forth the Sun, No Great Mischief), Jane Urquhart (Changing Heaven, Away, The Underpainter), and Margaret Atwood, whose novel The Blind Assassin is currently shortlisted for the U.K.'s prestigious Booker Prize (to be announced November 7).
Giller Prize winners are awarded $25000 and a bronze statue sculpted by Montreal artist Yehouda Chaki.
The Giller Prize was founded in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch to honour his wife Doris Giller, a groundbreaking Book Review Editor for the Montreal Gazette and Assistant Book review Editor for the Toronto Star. Ms. Giller lost her struggle against cancer in 1993.
The 1999 Giller Prize was awarded to Bonnie Burnard for A Good House.
Related Links
• Book Review: Anil's Ghost
• Book Review: Burridge Unbound
• Book Review: Mercy Among the Children
• Book Review: Monkey Beach
• CBC Interview: Eden Robinson
• Book Review: A Student of Weather
• Publisher's Comments: The Trade