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De Niro's Game, a novel by Canadian novelist Rawi Hage, has won the 13th annual International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The award is the world's richest literary prize ($160,000 CDN)and honors a single work of fiction written in English.

In a press release, Anansi, the novel's Canadian publisher, had this to say:

The win was announced today in Dublin, and marks the first time a debut book has won the prize. Hage is only the second Canadian to win the award, after Alistair MacLeod in 2001 for his novel No Great Mischief.

"To all those women and men of letters, and all artists who have gone beyond the aesthetics of the singular to represent the multiple and diverse, to all those men and women who have chosen the painful and costly portrayal of truth over tribal self-righteousness, I am grateful. We should all be grateful."
-- Rawi Hage in his acceptance speech

The IMPAC award caps a whirlwind ascent to literary stardom for an author whose book was pulled from publisher House of Anansi's slushpile, and was written in the Montreal resident's third language, English (he also speaks Arabic and French). Nominated for prestigious literary prizes in Canada and abroad -- including the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book -- De Niro's Game has so far been sold in fifteen territories, and can be read in a dozen languages. The French edition of De Niro's Game recently won the Prix des libraries du Quebec in time for its release in France, where Hage will appear at Festival America in Vincennes in September.

In 1992, Hage emigrated to Montreal after having lived through nine years of the Lebanese Civil War. Only two years ago, Rawi Hage was working as a cab driver and photographer. All that changed with the publication of De Niro's Game. With its haunting first words, "Ten thousand bombs had landed," Hage's novel crafts a beautiful and explosive portrait of young men who have been shaped by lifelong experience of war.

The IMPAC award is not only lucrative for the author, it is especially meaningful for readers because the books selected are nominated by public libraries from around the world. De Niro's Game was chosen by the Winnipeg Public Library and triumphed in the competition over 137 nominated titles by 162 public libraries from 45 countries.