TORONTO (AP) - Canadian author Esi Edugyan has won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for the second time with her latest novel “Washington Black.”
The novel follows the saga of an 11-year-old boy who escapes slavery at a Barbados sugar plantation with the help of the owner’s kinder brother.
The 100,000 Canadian dollar ($76,000) prize honors the best in Canadian fiction. Past winners have included Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler and Alice Munro.
Edugyan has also been shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust fiction prize and the Man Booker Prize in Britain.
She says the prize feels like an important celebration of words in a climate in which truth telling is under siege. Edugyan previously won the award in 2011 for “Half-Blood Blues.”
The Giller was created 25 years ago by late businessman Jack Rabinovitch.
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