Michael Redhill wins $100K Giller Prize for ‘Bellevue Square’
TORONTO — For more than a decade now, Toronto author Michael Redhill has been publishing mystery novels under the pseudonym Inger Ash Wolfe, but on Monday it was a piece of literary fiction bearing his actual name that won the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
The thriller “Bellevue Square” (Doubleday Canada), about a woman on the hunt for her doppelganger in a multicultural neighbourhood of Toronto, was praised by jury members for its “complex literary wonders” as it nabbed the prestigious honour.
Redhill seemed shocked as he accepted the prize and gave a tearful speech thanking his supporters as well as the late businessman Jack Rabinovitch, who founded the Giller Prize in 1994 in honour of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.
“I was a little more emotional than I was expecting to be — but life doesn’t prepare you for receiving a $100,000 cheque and then addressing people live across the nation, so I think I will probably have no memory of this evening in about 20 minutes, just to protect myself,” he said with a laugh in an interview after the awards ceremony.