Henry James Fiction-Bio Awarded $125G

Colm Toibin became the first Irish winner
Tuesday of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Toibin - whose novel "The Master" explored the tortured soul
of the 19th century American novelist Henry James - received the
$125,000 prize and a Waterford crystal trophy during a ceremony in
Dublin City Hall. The 11-year-old prize is one of the world's most
lucrative for fiction writers.

A four-judge panel from Britain, Canada, Ireland and Italy
selected "The Master" from a field of 132 novels.
The judges praised Toibin's work as "a powerful account of the
hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the
heart. ... Its preoccupations are truth and the elusiveness of
intimacy, and from such preoccupations emerge this patient,
beautiful exposure of loss, and the price of the pursuit of
perfection."

Toibin, a 50-year-old former journalist and magazine editor, has
written four other novels. A visiting lecturer at Stanford
University, he now plans to return to Dublin to work on a new
novel.

"The great advantage of this is it really frees you, the
money," Toibin said.