Up with Down

The world’s richest prize for a work of fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, has been awarded to American author Michael Thomas for Man Gone Down.  This extraordinary debut novel is the story of a young black father of three in a biracial marriage who has four days to make enough money to reunite his family.  Alternating between the narrator’s past and present, readers are confronted with the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated culture.  The judging panel praised Man Gone Down as “brilliant in its scope and energy, and deeply moving in its human warmth.”  Previous winners of the prize, nominated from public libraries around the world, include Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson and The Master by Colm Tóibín.