Colm Tóibín & Colum McCann: Literary Prize Winners
Congratulations to Colm Tóibín and Colum McCann for their recent literary prizes. Colm Tóibín picked up the Costa Novel Award on 4th January for Brooklyn, a book which the judges said was 'poised, quiet and incrementally shattering - we all loved this book and can't praise it highly enough.'
Colum McCann received the 2009 National Book Award (fiction) for his post 9/11 novel Let The Great World Spin, at a ceremony held at Cipriani Wall Street in New York on 18 November 2009. The novel drew these words of praise from the judges: 'From 10 ordinary lives he crafts an indelibly hallucinatory portrait of a decaying New York City, and offers through his generosity of spirit and lyrical gifts an ecstatic vision of the human courage required to stay aloft above the ever-yawning abyss.' ILE has awarded translation grants to the French (Éditions Belfond) and Dutch (De Harmonie) editions.