Colm Tóibín has been awarded the prestigious Los Angeles Times Book Award for his novel The Master. The book won in the fiction category.
The Master had previously been short-listed for The Man Booker Prize, The WHSmith Award, The British Book Awards & The Hughes & Hughes/Sunday Independent Novel of the Year.
Tóibín's novel about Henry James won the prize at the 25th annual Los Angeles Times Book Prizes awarded on Friday night at UCLA's Royce Hall.
The Times citation described the novel as 'an illumination of the very process of writing itself - a compelling, richly rewarding and utterly original work of fiction about family and friendship and art in the Modern Age.'
Awards in nine categories for books in 2004 were handed out in a ceremony moderated by journalist Harold Evans, an author and former president of Random House.
Evans set the tone for the evening by decrying what he called the 'tyranny of numbers' in which success is measured by sales.
