The Bookseller.com

28th August 2008

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Rowling and McEwan win Nibbies

10.04.08 Anna Richardson

J K Rowling and Ian McEwan were the big winners at this year's Galaxy British Book Awards, with Rowling taking home the Outstanding Achievement award. The award was Rowling's fifth Nibbie win, having previously won the children's book category twice, as well as the author and book of the year categories. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who presented the award, said: "She has joined a distinguished line of British authors whose work has got the whole country reading, and whose books will be read for many years to come by successive generations."

McEwan, meanwhile, was crowned the Author of the Year for On Chesil Beach (Cape) which was also named the Book of the Year. Other winners were Russell Brand, whose My Booky Wook (Hodder) won the biography category; Khaled Hosseini, whose A Thousand Splendid Suns (Bloomsbury) was voted the "Richard & Judy" Best Read by the general public; and crime writer Patricia Cornwell, who won the crime thriller award for her novel Book of the Dead (Little, Brown).

Tindal Street Press author Catherine O'Flynn took home the Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year accolade for her novel What Was Lost. Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman secured the popular non-fiction price for Long Way Down (Sphere), and the popular fiction award went to Kim Edwards for The Memory Keeper's Daughter (Penguin). Geri Halliwell presented children's author Francesca Simon with the Children's Book of the Year for Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman (Orion). She beat controversial nominee Katie Price, who was shortlisted for My Pony Care Book (Random House).

The awards ceremony will be broadcast on Channel 4 this Sunday (13th April), at 4.40pm.

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