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Writing is the only thing I'm good at, says the gardener who has won(Evening Standard Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge)A FORMER itinerant handyman and gardener has won the Whitbread Prize for best first novel. Rank outsider Tash Aw, 34, took the award for The Harmony Silk Factory, described by judges as a "gripping" chronicle of a journey through the Malaysian jungle during the Second World War. Aw, who was brought up in Malaysia but now lives in Islington, was stunned to learn of his win. "I thought it was some kind of elaborate joke," he said. "Then I became really neurotic and thought they'd made a mistake and when it was announced it wouldn't be my name after all." Aw moved to Britain to read law at Cambridge when he was 18. Later, he took a succession of odd jobs, including decorating and gardening, while writing short stories. After running low on money, he took his law exams and worked in the City, earning enough to pay for an MA course in creative writing at the University of East Anglia. In 2003, he landed a deal for The Harmony Silk Factory, which took him five years to write. Aw said: "Writing is the only thing I'm good at. I was crap at everything else. But I'm glad I did the law because I think getting a job is a good test of any young writer's resolve. "If you're only playing at the idea of writing then it's not going to happen." Aw, whose parents are Chinese-Malaysian, is writing his second book. "It's an urban fairytale set in Indonesia and Malaysia in the Sixties and involves twin brothers," he said. Scottish author Ali Smith, 43, beat Salman Rushdie and Nick Hornby to the award for best novel with The Accidental, about a woman who turns a Norfolk family's world upside down. Christopher Logue, 79, won the poetry award for Cold Calls, a modern account of Homer's Iliad. Matisse The Master by Hilary Spurling won best biography-and The New Policeman by Kate Thompson was best children's book. The five winners, each of whom will receive GBP5,000, were selected from 476 entries, the highest total ever received in one year. The five books are now eligible for the ultimate prize - the 2005 Whitbread Book of the Year, to be announced in London on 24 January. |