Whitbread Category winners announced January 3, 2006
by sernabad
Ali Smith, author of The Accidental, has won the Whitbread Novel Award, after twice being denied last year (Man Booker and Orange Prize for Fiction). Ms. Smith beat out such Whitbread heavyweight contenders as Nick Hornby (A Long Way Down) and Salman Rushdie (Shalimar the Clown).
Other category winners that were announced today are:
Biography Award – Hilary Spurling for Matisse the Master: A Life of Henri Matisse, the Conquest of Colour, 1909-1954
First Novel Award – Tash Aw for The Harmony Silk Factory
Poetry Award – Christopher Logue for Cold Calls
Children’s Book Award – Kate Thompson for The New Policeman
The five category winners, who each won £5000 ($8650), will now compete for the overall Whitbread prize purse of £25000 ($43,090) which will be awarded on January 24th.
Whitbread PLC stunned the literary world late last year with its announcement that it was looking for sponsors for this most prestigious of British book awards.
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