In its first year under the sponsorship of the property investment firm Sundial Properties, and the first year that prizes were awarded in several literary categories, Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award was presented to Kirsty Gunn over the weekend at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The New Zealand native’s novella, The Boy and the Sea, was chosen over winners in the nonfiction and poetry categories, as well as a debut writer, and she saw the selection as striking a blow for literary fiction: “The middlebrow has become predominant, and the bookshops are full of Jamie Oliver,” she told the Sunday Herald, “while mighty writers like James Kelman are almost ignored. All we can do is keep reading him. But I do think it shows the amazing intelligence and breadth and reach of this judging panel that it has embraced this short novel of mine that is in so many ways such an unconventional piece of literary fiction.”
In addition to a £25,000 prize, Gunn will gain as many as 1,000 new readers—that’s how many copies of her book will be handed out to travelers departing from the Edinburgh airport.