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Mengestu début wins Guardian prize

05.12.07 Anna Richardson

Dinaw Mengestu has won the Guardian First Book Award for his novel Children of the Revolution (Cape).

Mengestu’s début about one man’s quest for the American dream was chosen from a shortlist which also included Samuel Johnson Prize-winner Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City (Bloomsbury), A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam (John Murray), God’s Architect by Rosemary Hill (Allen Lane) and What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn (Tindal Street).

The £10,000 prize rewards new writing across both fiction and non-fiction and is open to any genre. The winner was chosen by a panel of judges and members of the public, who participated through reading groups run by Waterstone’s across seven stores.

Claire Armitstead, chair of the judges and Guardian literary editor, said at the ceremony yesterday (5th December): “Dinaw Mengestu emerged as the winner because of the economy and power with which he depicts the dead-end lives of his characters. Unusually for a first novel, there is no slack in his writing and no authorial vanity to interfere with his evocation of immigrant life in 21st-century America.”

Media Anna Richardson Prize

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