Awards: Not the Booker Prize

Winnie M. Li won the Guardian's 2017 Not the Booker Prize, which recognizes the "year's best book, which may--or may not--tally with the assessment of the Man Booker prize judges," for Dark Chapter, which "was the voting public's favorite, and our judges concurred." 

Although Dark Chapter had been ahead in the voting, "the final choice was not clear cut," the Guardian wrote. "Our judges also had one vote each--and two of them favored Harriet Paige's Man With a Seagull on His Head. They shared my general opinion that this book is beautifully written, engaging and strange. It fell to our third judge, Hannah Bruce Macdonald, to make a case for Dark Chapter as the book that had stayed with her the longest. She argued that it wasn't just an important and brave novel, it was also a story well told.

"All of our judges were admirably civil, but Hannah must have felt some pressure as we interrogated what prizes are for and how we define literary merit. She stood firm and made effective and persuasive arguments. As a result, we have a worthy and powerful winner."

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