Boyden wins Giller
Author's second novel, a tale of aboriginal culture's urban-rural divide, earns $50,000 and the acclaim of Canada's literary elite

JAMES ADAMS
Globe and Mail Update
November 11, 2008 at 10:02 PM EST

TORONTO — Three years ago, not a few Canadian book lovers were stunned when Joseph Boyden's debut novel, Three Day Road, failed to make the short list for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. A critical favourite and a big seller, it seemed a shoo-in for consideration for Canada's most prestigious English-language fiction prize.

None of the Giller's three jurors, however, got the hint.
They got it last night, however. At a lavish televised ceremony in Toronto, the 42-year-old Mr. Boyden prevailed over four other finalists — two men, two women — to win $50,000 as the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize laureate.

He won it, and the bronze trophy emblematic of Giller supremacy, for his second novel, Through Black Spruce, a sequel of sorts to Three Day Road.
This year's jury — Margaret Atwood, a Giller winner in 1996, federal Liberal leadership hopeful Bob Rae and Irish author/critic Colm Toibin, the first non-Canadian juror in the Giller's 15-year history — lauded the book "for its spare prose style that ranges from lyrical to brutal … and that shows us unforgettable characters and a northern landscape in a way we have never seen before."