Vancouver-raised author Madeleine Thien wins Scotiabank Giller Prize for Do Not Say We Have Nothing

    1 of 1 2 of 1

      Vancouver-born, Montreal-based author Madeleine Thien has collected another major literary award for her novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing.

      Thien received the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize on November 7 in Toronto.

      At a televised gala, she thanked her mother and her partner, writer and photographer Rawi Hage.

      She previously was announced as the 2016 recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, which will be presented to her on November 30 in Ottawa.

      The jury was comprised of Lawrence Hill, Samantha Harvey, Jeet Heer, Alan Warner, and Kathleen Winter.

      Of the book, the jury stated in a news release:

      Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien entranced the jurors with its detailed, layered, complex drama of classical musicians and their loved ones trying to survive two monstrous insults to their humanity: Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in mid-twentieth century China and the Tiananmen Square massacre of protestors in Beijing in 1989. Do Not Say We Have Nothing addresses some of the timeless questions of literature: who do we love, and how do the love of art, of others and ourselves sustain us individually and collectively in the face of genocide? A beautiful homage to music and to the human spirit, Do Not Say We Have Nothing is both sad and uplifting in its dramatization of human loss and resilience in China and in Canada.”

      The novel was also nominated for the 2016 Man Booker Prize but lost to Paul Beatty's The Sellout

      Comments