Achiltibuie author Sarah Bernstein wins $100,000 in 'Canada's most influential literary prize for fiction'
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Achiltibuie author Sarah Bernstein has won Canada's 'most influential literary prize for fiction' along with a CA$100,000 cash prize (about £58,235).
Bernstein took home the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize in Toronto for her latest novel, Study for Obedience, published by Knopf Canada in July 2023.
Originally from Montreal, Quebec, Bernstein now lives in Achiltibuie in Wester Ross where she works as a writer and teaches modern and contemporary literature.
She has also been named in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2023, and an earlier collection of poems was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Writing.
The winner of the prize was chosen by a panel of five judges, who narrowed down the 145 entries to a single winner.
More than 300 guests attended at the awards ceremony which was broadcast live by Canada's CBC.
The judges said about Bernstein's book: “The modernist experiment continues to burn incandescently in Sarah Bernstein’s slim novel, Study for Obedience. Bernstein asks the indelible question: what does a culture of subjugation, erasure, and dismissal of women produce?
"In this book, equal parts poisoned and sympathetic, Bernstein’s unnamed protagonist goes about exacting, in shockingly twisted ways, the price of all that the world has withheld from her. It’s an unexpected and fanged book, and its own studied withholdings create a powerful mesmeric effect.”
Elana Rabinovitch, executive director, Scotiabank Giller Prize said: “Study for Obedience is a ground-breaking, contemplative novel about victimhood and survival, a story told with unnerving precision by an author at the top of her game.”
To celebrate the release of Study for Obedience in the summer, Bernstein held a book launch at The Ceilidh Place in Ullapool.
Founded in 1994, the Giller Prize is considered Canada’s leading and most influential award for fiction.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize now awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English. The award is named in honour of the late literary journalist, Doris Giller.
Her novel was also long-listed for the Booker Prize.
