An American author’s satirical novel has been named as the winner of this year’s Dundee International Book Prize.
New York writer Jacob M Appel received the £10,000 cash prize and a deal with publishing house Cargo for his debut novel The Man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up.
Mr Appel was presented with his award at a gala dinner on Thursday evening staged as part of the Dundee Literary Festival.
He said he was thrilled to have won the prize and see his book published.
”One of the great benefits of the Dundee prize is that it draws an international pool of writers,” he said. ”We live in a far too insulated literary world in the US so it is exciting to be part of the international literary community.”
The book sees a mild-mannered man accidentally spark a major incident in the United States by refusing to stand for the national anthem at a baseball game.
He said: ”Shortly after the attacks of September 11 2001 in the United States I knew I wanted to write a book against the backlash of those events.
”It took me three years to complete The man Who Wouldn’t Stand Up. At the time, I did not think it would take me another eight years to find a publisher.
”I came close many times, but American publishers appeared to fear the political content of the work and several of them admitted this candidly or even asked me to ‘sanitise’ the novel.
”So I am deeply grateful to Dundee and Cargo for bringing out the work in the way that I had intended.”
A total of 475 entries were read before the judging panel of TV star Stephen Fry, acclaimed authors Philip Pullman and Alan Bissett and literary agent Jenny Brown decided upon the winner.
The competition, which is now in its eighth year, attracted a record amount of entries.
Runners-up Pippa Goldschmitt and Matt Hill have both secured deals for their novels with an independent publisher.
Will Dawson, convener of Dundee City Council’s development committee, said: ”The Dundee International Book Prize is now firmly established on the literary prize map.
”It continues to help build Dundee’s growing and impressively varied cultural reputation.”