Andrew McMillan's poetry collection Physical won the £10,000 ($15,035) Guardian First Book Award. Noting that it was "only the second time a poet has even made the shortlist," Claire Armitstead, the Guardian's books editor, called the first win for poetry in the prize's 17-year history "a thrilling development for us as poetry so rarely breaks through in generalist prizes.... Andrew McMillan's breathtaking collection shows that good poetry can and does still enlarge, replenish and delight. It is wonderful that a collection so tightly focused on masculinity and gay love could have such a wide appeal, across age and gender. It surprised us all with the best sort of ambush, emerging from an extremely strong and vibrant shortlist as the unanimously agreed winner."
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A shortlist has been announced for the $50,000 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, which honors "the best work in fiction to one author from any ethnicity or nationality provided they write about South Asia and its people." The winner will be named January 16 at the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka. This year's shortlisted titles are:
Family Life by Akhil Sharma
Sleeping on Jupiter by Anuradha Roy
Hang Woman by K.R. Meera
The Book of Gold Leaves by Mirza Waheed
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
She Will Build Him a City by Raj Kamal Jha
