TORONTO — Victoria-based author Esi Edugyan says her Scotiabank Giller Prize win Tuesday night — two months after the birth of her first child — is the culmination of a “miraculous” year.
“It’s all good things at once. It’s an embarrassment of riches,” Edugyan, 34, said after winning the coveted $50,000 prize for her much-lauded sophomore novel, Half-Blood Blues.
“It’s been just everything. I could die tomorrow!” she added with a laugh. “Everything’s been wonderful. I couldn’t have asked for a better year.”
Edugyan, a Calgary native, beat out five other writers, including CanLit legend Michael Ondaatje, to nab the Giller.
“He’s this amazing figure and he’s been such an influence and such a mentor,” Edugyan said of Ondaatje, who was a finalist for The Cat’s Table.
“He’s just incredible and so to meet him, it’s been like a dream.”
Half-Blood Blues is about a group of black jazz musicians trying to survive in Europe during the Second World War.
It’s been a much feted title, landing on the short lists for the Man Booker Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
It’s also in contention for a Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, to be announced Nov. 15.
Edugyan says she’s been in a daze throughout the various awards ceremonies. She’s a first-time mother to a two-month old baby.
“It’s been just basically sleepwalking through most of it,” she said before the Giller dinner Tuesday, looking stunning in a black, floor-length dress by Tadashi Shoji.
“I’m so utterly exhausted all of the time, but you can’t complain and you can’t help but feel so grateful and I’m totally amazed! I mean, I got to go to the Booker and the Giller in the same year, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust. It’s been really great.”
In addition to Ondaatje, Edugyan’s book beat out her prize season compatriot, Vancouver Island native Patrick deWitt. His comical western novel The Sisters Brothers was also a Man Booker contender, and last week it won the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
DeWitt is also up for the Governor General’s Literary Award next week.
“It’s a great blessing to be nominated for four awards but it’s also a great stress,” said Edugyan, who is married to poet and novelist Steven Price, whom she called her “biggest source of support.”
“Every ceremony is quite stressful so . . . I do very much feel like I can sort of relax a little bit (after the Giller win) and enjoy things a little bit more.”
DeWitt, she noted, has been “so lovely and so wonderful” throughout their awards-season blitz.
“He’s been a real touchstone so I know that wherever I go, if I don’t know a face in the room I at least know Patrick and that’s been really terrific,” said Edugyan, whose first novel was The Second Life of Samuel Tyne.
“It’s been a blessing that we’ve been on the short lists together.”
Rounding out the Giller short list was Toronto-based author and filmmaker David Bezmozgis for “The Free World”; Edmonton resident Lynn Coady for “The Antagonist”; and Calgary-raised Zsuzsi Gartner for “Better Living Through Plastic Explosives.”
“Esi Edugyan’s book just had that extra special thing — a sense of humanity, a sense of history,” said Giller jury member Andrew O’Hagan, a U.K. playwright and novelist.
“This book will be around for decades.”
Finalists for the Giller receive $5,000 apiece.
Edugyan said she’ll try to stretch her prize money “as far as it will go” and use it to continue writing.
“I’ve got myself some time to write and I’ve got a newborn, so a lot will go to raising her,” she added, noting she hopes to resume writing a new book she had put aside when her daughter was born.
The Giller TV broadcast, which aired live on CBC Bold and was hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, kicked off on a musical note with a performance by Chinese piano superstar Lang Lang, who is in the city for a series of dates with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.
It also featured some star power from Robbie Robertson and Nelly Furtado who helped introduce the nominated books.
Guests who mingled before dinner included MP Bob Rae, former CBC honcho Denise Donlon, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson and businessman Scott Griffin.
On the menu was sweet chili ahi tuna tartare and slow roasted high river beef tenderloin.
Ahead of the ceremony, Caroline Walker, inventory manager at McNally Robinson Booksellers in Saskatoon, said that Ondaatje’s novel has been outselling all Giller contenders “by a long shot.”
“The paperbacks, like ’The Sisters Brothers’ and ’Half-Blood Blues,’ are selling quite strongly,” she added. “I think that’s just because they’ve been getting so much media attention from ... being nominated for every award on the go there.”
The same sort of trend has been seen at Ben McNally Books in Toronto, where “The Cat’s Table” has been the top seller of the Giller finalists, and “The Sisters Brothers” and “Half-Blood Blues” have also had brisk sales.
“The two multi-listed books are doing very well as a result of the nominations, and the two books by people with a reputation — Bezmozgis and Michael Ondaatje — were doing very well from the time they were published,” said owner Ben McNally.
The Giller Prize was established in 1994 by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.
It has become one of the country’s most popular and lucrative literary awards, with nominated books receiving a considerable boost in sales.
Last year’s winner, “The Sentimentalists” by Johanna Skibsrud, was a bit of an anomaly to the so-called “Giller effect” because its tiny Nova Scotia publisher, Gaspereau Press, couldn’t keep up with demand for the novel.
When Douglas & McIntyre published a paperback edition, though, the book became the No. 1 bestselling fiction title in Canada two weeks before Christmas, according to BookNet Canada, which tracks book sales across the country.
The other 2011 Giller jury members included Canadian writer and 2009 Giller finalist Annabel Lyon and American author Howard Norman.
They read a record-breaking 143 titles put forward by 55 publishing houses from across Canada.