2009 Governor General Award
Since 1937 the Governor General′s Literary Awards have been among the most prestigious prizes a Canadian author can receive.
The award was created by John Buchan, the author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, and first awarded in 1936, however it was not until 1957 that the award was administered by the Canada Council for the Arts and a cash prize was attributed.
Since its inception some of Canada′s most famous authors have received the Governor General′s Award including Emily Carr, Bruce Hutchinson, Alice Munro and Margaret Atwood.
The 2009 Governor General Award shortlist and winners:
Fiction
The Mistress of Nothing - WINNER!
Kate Pullinger
A highly sensual evocation of place and time, Kate Pullinger′s The Mistress of Nothing is a journey down the Nile that explores the subtle complexities of power, race, class and love during the Victorian era. The book, narrated by the character of the maid, Sally Naldrett, has one of the most distinctive and memorable voices in recent literature.
The Golden Mean
Annabel Lyon
Annabel Lyon′s The Golden Mean is a wise and subtle journey into the Court of Philip of Macedon, the mind of Aristotle and his complex relationship with his pupil, Alexander the Great. In this glorious balancing act of a book, Aristotle emerges as a man both brilliant and blind, immersed in life but terrified of living.
Too Much Happiness
Alice Munro
In Too Much Happiness, Alice Munro again displays her profound mastery of the short story form. With Shakespearean overtones of rage and sorrow, the book is remarkable in its scope and versatility. Every story astonishes, entertains and evokes a powerful visceral response. Munro could not be less than brilliant if she tried.
Galore
Michael Crummey
Michael Crummey′s Galore is a gorgeous and mysterious whale of a book - part multi-generational love story, part riff on the Bible, and part tall tale. Spanning several generations in a remote Newfoundland outport, this story is bursting with fantastical events, colourful characters and delicious dialogue. An unforgettable journey.
Vanishing and Other Stories
Deborah Willis
Vanishing and Other Stories is a book of rare insight into the complications of the human heart. Light of touch but deep in content, Deborah Willis′s stories startle, exhilarate and radiate with piercing insights. Original and deftly structured, all 14 continue to resonate long after the book is finished.
Non-Fiction
A Place Within: Rediscovering India - WINNER!
M.G. Vassanji
Lyrical, evocative and informative, A Place Within reaches deep into a long, contested past history, and brings it to the surface, to the present, so the reader can see it, and touch it in its fullness. M.G. Vassanji′s prose has a transcendent quality, like the journey itself.
Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds
Trevor Harriot
Like the resilient but vulnerable birds that are its subject, this is a book of great and simple beauty. Trevor Herriot is a wise guide into a vanishing realm, almost invisible at the threshold of human culture. His poetic prose - finely-crafted, urgent and lyrical - reminds us of the entwined spirits of the human and natural worlds.
American Raj: Liberation or Domination?
Eric S. Margolis
American Raj offers the missing context to the media coverage of current political events. Written from the perspective of the Muslim world, Eric S. Margolis′s fluid narrative is an unapologetic account of the growing mistrust of Muslims toward the West. Powerful and unequivocal writing that shuns easy answers.
The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece
Eric Siblin
A delightfully quirky quest to uncover the three-century-old mystery and magic behind Johann Sebastian Bach′s famous cello suites. Eric Siblin seamlessly weaves together the tale of how Bach′s lost and mostly forgotten manuscript came to be discovered a century later by Pablo Casals, and finally became Siblin′s personal passion.
Fire and Fury: The Allied Combing of Germany, 1942-45
Randall Hansen
A brave re-examination of a controversial episode in World War II history. Randall Hansen combines meticulous research with an eye for telling human detail to make his case that the Allied bombing campaign didn′t help to win the war, and actually prolonged it. A book that offers lessons for today.
Poetry
The Fly in Autumn - WINNER!
David Zieroth
David Zieroth′s The Fly in Autumn is a note-perfect rendering sof the poet′s greatest challenge - to risk oneself in the name of knowing and feeling. It reveals that quietness need not mean silence, that modesty need not mean invisibility, and that comfort is not always found in ease.
Little Hunger
Philip Kevin Paul
Fine lyric moments and an admirable and generous awareness characterize Philip Kevin Paul′s Little Hunger. These poems inhabit and embody deep resonances of family, place and language. A beautiful congruence of personal exploration, cultural endurance and human experience.
Expressway
Sina Queyras
Expressway is a jagged meditation on how we have constructed ourselves and our world. From a collage of Google text to a re-visioning of the journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, Sina Queyras explores the possibilities for poetry and human survival as death, speed and spurious freedoms collide with dreams of hope, wisdom and action.
This Way Out
Carmine Starnino
Carmine Starnino′s This Way Out is a book of marvelous skill and heart, at once accessible and rigorous, serious and humorous, protean and profound. These poems do not advocate love at first sight, but love reborn from second looks. They are canny, genuine odes to the triplets known as Yesterday, Tomorrow and Today.
Be Calm, Honey
David W. McFadden
David McFadden′s Be Calm, Honey displays masterful wit in a sequence of playful sonnets that engage the slipperiness of moment, thought and experience. There is delightful wisdom and humanity in the quirky disguises and accessibility of his plain speech.
If you would like to learn more about the Governor General's Award and some of its past winners, read our interview with John H. Meier, the curator of the world's finest Governor General's Fiction Award collection and founder of the W.A. Deacon Literary Foundation.
