Michael THOMAS takes the IMPAC Award

FIRST-TIME NOVELIST Michael Thomas has won the 2009 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his novel, Man Gone Down, published by Grove Atlantic in December 2006, it was announced on Thursday, June 11, 2009, in Dublin, Ireland. Man Gone Down is the story of a man grappling with the throes of survival in Brooklyn, New York. The début novelist beat off strong competition from such well-reviewed novelists as Junot Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, David Leavitt’s The Indian Clerk and Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. The American author is the third first-time novelist to win the lucrative prize since Andrew Miller won it in 1999 with Ingenious Pain and Rawi Hage in 2008 with De Niro’s Game.