Australian author and Irish resident DBC Pierre yesterday won the Whitbread First Novel award for his Booker Prize-winning novel Vernon God Little.
Not for the first time - and probably not for the last - the Whitbread Literary Awards compensated for the shortcomings of the Booker Prize, with the main prize going to 2003's most original novel, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.
Although few would dispute Vernon God Little as an excellent Booker choice, many critics felt that Haddon's remarkable portrayal of a young autistic boy's efforts to track down the murderer of his neighbour's dog, was a strong Booker contender.
Told from the boy's viewpoint, it is a book about life as experienced by a bright boy who has had to deal with many things, including the poor behaviour of his bewildered parents, from his position in the margins of emotion.
Haddon's book, published in both children's and adults' editions, underlines the wide appeal of the best of fiction written for children. Haddon is an established children's author and illustrator.
Haddon won his category ahead of disappointing company: fellow Britons Shena Mackay (Heligoland) and Rachel Cusk (The Way Out), and South African author Barbara Trapido's heavily autobiographical Frankie and Stankie.
DBC Pierre's rivals in a strong first-novel field included Dubliner Paul Murray (An Evening of Long Goodbyes), Anne Donovan (Buddha Da) and Talitha Stevenson (An Empty Room).
Biographies of three fascinating women - politician Margaret Thatcher and writers Martha Gelhorn and Patricia Highsmith - conceded victory to D.J. Taylor's Orwell: The Life. Published to mark the centenary of Orwell's birth, its success says more about the enduring status and relevance of Orwell than it does about the book, which is curiously laboured and not as impressive as the Highsmith study.
Five years after winning the Whitbread Children's Book Award for Skellig, David Almond wins again - this time with The Fire-Eaters. There was no surprise when Don Paterson, one of the surest of contemporary poets, won his category with the strong, thematically diverse collection, Landing Light.
All five winners will now contest the Whitbread Book of the Year, to be announced on January 27th, with Paterson and Haddon likely to decide the outcome.
