Montreal's Hage wins 2 Quebec literary awards

Montreal writer Rawi Hage,who wasnominated for the Giller and Governor General's prizes this year,has won two Quebec literary awards for his debut novel, De Niro's Game.

Hagetook home both theHugh MacLennan Prize for Fictionandthe McAuslan First Book Prize, eachworth $2,000,atthe Quebec Writers' Federation literary awards gala in Montreal on Wednesday night.

The Hugh MacLennan jury called the Lebanon-born writer's story of two friends who go separate ways during the conflict in the war-torn nation "a profoundly chilling work that renders unflinchingly the ravages of war, but also a deep humour and compassion."

The first-book juryagreed, calling the book "harsh, distressing and beautiful. The poetry of his language in no way undermines the brutality of his subject. This is the work of a major literary talent."

Hage wasthe only author to be nominated this year for both the Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literature Award for fiction.

TheGiller went to Toronto's Dr.Vincent Lam for his stories Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures and the Governor General's award earlier this week to Montreal-born Peter Behrens for The Law of Dreams.

Other winners of theQWFawards, also worth $2,000 each,included:

• Susan Elmslie of Montreal, who won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry for her first book I, Nadja, and Other Poems.
• Sherry Simon, who won the Mavis Gallant Prize for non-fictions book Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City.
• Lori Saint-Martin and Paul Gagn, who won the Translation Prizefor La Clameur des tnbres, their translation of Neil Bissoondath's The Unyielding Clamour of the Night, which won last year's Hugh MacLennan Prize.