Thomas the 2009 IMPAC Award winner

American author Michael Thomas (a member of Hunter College’s English faculty) was named the winner of the world’s richest literary prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, in Dublin yesterday.

Thomas won the ?100,000 award for his debut novel ‘Man Gone Down’, which tells the story of an African-American at a crossroads in his life and racing against time to find the money to keep his family from falling apart.

The IMPAC judges said the book was a “masterful debut” and described Thomas as “a writer of enthralling voice and startling insight”.
Also nominated were: Junot Díaz (‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’), Jean Echenoz (‘Ravel’), Mohsin Hamid (‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’), Travis Holland (‘The Archivist’s Story’), Roy Jacobsen (‘The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles’), David Leavitt (‘The Indian Clerk’) and Indra Sinha (‘Animal’s People’).