Colum McCann Walks Away With Top Fiction Award For Novel, Let The Great World Spin
Posted: Thursday, November 19, 2009
by Edward Rhymes
The 60th
annual National Book Awards was a stage for literature to be celebrated and for
authors to shine.
As e-books gain
in popularity, Colum McCann insisted that paper texts were stronger than ever.
McCann won the fiction prize for "Let the Great World Spin," a novel
about daring, luck and mortality in the pre-digital world of 1970s New York.
He has called his book an act of hope written in part as a response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Accepting his prize, McCann praised the generosity of American fiction and of the American people. He dedicated the win to a fellow Irish-American, "good old" Frank McCourt.
"I think he's dancing upstairs," McCann said of the "Angela's Ashes" author, who died last summer after a battle with cancer.
Colum McCann won the National Book Award for fiction on
Wednesday night for "Let the Great World Spin," a novel featuring a sprawling
cast of characters in 1970s New York City whose lives are ineluctably touched
by the mysterious tightrope walker who traverses a wire suspended between the
Twin Towers one morning.
He has called his book an act of hope written in part as a response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Accepting his prize, McCann praised the generosity of American fiction and of the American people. He dedicated the win to a fellow Irish-American, "good old" Frank McCourt.
"I think he's dancing upstairs," McCann said of the "Angela's Ashes" author, who died last summer after a battle with cancer.
In accepting the award, the Irish-born Mr. McCann, now a
teacher of creative writing at Hunter College, said "as fiction writers and
people who believe in the word, we have to enter the anonymous corners of human
experience to make that little corner right." The book was published by Random
House.
Here McCann talks
about the inspiration for his novel:
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