Award Winners

Desmond Elliott Prize 2012 Winner

Grace McCleen was named the winner of the fifth Desmond Elliot Prize for her debut novel The Land of Decoration, a visceral and memorable depiction of an imaginative child trying to reconcile her idyllic interior life with a harsher world.

Extraordinarily bright for her 10 years but isolated by her strange faith, Judith McPherson's life with her widowed father feels oppressively quiet. She creates an intricate replica of her town in her room--one that lives by the rules of her internal logic--and makes the astonishing discovery that what she does in her bedroom's Land of Decoration gives her miraculous abilities in this one.

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 Winner

Congratulations to Jon McGregor, winner of the 2012 IMPAC Literary Award for Even the Dogs. His novel is an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society--littered with love, loss, despair and a half-glimpse of redemption.

The IMPAC Literary Award is the largest and most international prize of its kind, involving libraries from all corners of the globe.

Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2012 Winner

Congratulations to Hilary Mantel for winning the 2012 Man Booker Prize for her novel Bring Up the Bodies.

The first woman and the first British author to win the prize twice, Mantel is also the first to win with a sequel, following the success of her 2009 Man Booker Prize winner, Wolf Hall.

With an audacious vision of Tudor England, Bring Up the Bodies explores one of the most mystifying and frightening episodes in English history: the destruction of Anne Boleyn.

In this exclusive guest blog on Kindle Post, Mantel talks about her surprise at winning for a second time, and the intimidating prospect of writing the third book in this prize-winning trilogy.

›See the 2012 Man Booker Prize nominees