KEY POINTS:
A novel which took Wellington writer Lloyd Jones three years and 11 drafts to complete won the Montana Medal for fiction or poetry at last night's Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
Mister Pip, told from the perspective of a Bougainvillean girl educated by readings of Great Expectations by
her white teacher in the war-torn island during the 90s, also won the Readers' Choice Award.
In May, Jones' book won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, which includes a package of £10,000 ($26,000) and tea with the Queen next month at Buckingham Palace.
Jones' three-year labour to produce Mister Pip pales in comparison to the winner of the Montana Medal for non-fiction, Dunedin author and botanical artist Audrey Eagle's Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand, a two-volume epic which took her more than 50 years to complete. The set, which includes more than 800 hand-painted plates of every tree and shrub in the country, including some extinct species, is an updated edition of two earlier books by Eagle, published in 1975 and 1983.
Rachael King, daughter of the late Michael King, won the Best First Book Award for The Sound of Butterflies. Wellington writer Nigel Cox, who died of cancer at the age of 55 a year ago, was named a fiction runner-up for his novel Cowboy Dog, as was Damien Wilkins with The Fainter.
Each category winner received $5000, and the Montana Medal winners each received a further $10,000. The fiction runners-up received $2500 and the Reader's Choice Award was worth $1000.
The 2007 Montana NZ Book Awards:
Montana Medal for Fiction or Poetry: Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones.
Runners-up: The Cowboy Dog, by Nigel Cox; The Fainter, by Damien Wilkins.
Poetry winner: The Goose Bath, by Janet Frame.
Montana Medal for Non-fiction and Illustrative: Eagle's Complete Trees and Shrubs of New Zealand, by Audrey Eagle.
Biography: Douglas Lilburn: His Life and Music, by Philip Norman.
History: Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors, edited by K.R. Howe.
Reference and anthology: Furniture of the NZ Colonial Era: An Illustrated History 1830-1900, by William Cottrell.
Lifestyle and contemporary culture: Stitch: Contemporary NZ Textile Artists, by Ann Packer.
Environment: Ghosts of Gondwana: The History of Life in New Zealand, by George Gibbs.
NZSA Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction: The Sound of Butterflies, by Rachael King.
NZSA Jessie Mackay Best First Book Award for Poetry: Secret Heart, by Airini Beautrais.
NZSA E.H. McCormick Best First Book Award for Non-fiction: Furniture of the NZ Colonial Era, by William Cottrell.
Book Publishers Association Reviewer of the Year: David Eggleton.
Book Publishers Association Review Page or Programme: NZ Listener.