Tamas Dobozy’s Budapest battle tales in ‘Seige 13′ win Writers’ Trust prize

TORONTO – Waterloo, Ont.-based author Tamas Dobozy’s short story collection about the brutal siege of Budapest during the Second World War has won the $25,000 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

“Seige 13” (Thomas Allen Publishers), which features 13 fictional tales linked to the bloody battle, landed the honour on Wednesday in a ceremony hosted by CBC Radio One’s Shelagh Rogers at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto.

It beat out four other books, including “Carnival” by IMPAC Dublin Literary Award winner Rawi Hage of Montreal, and Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist “Inside” by Montreal native Alix Ohlin.

This year’s other Writers’ Trust fiction finalists — who each receive $2,500 — included Edmonton-based Tim Bowling for “The Tinsmith” and Linda Spalding of Toronto for “The Purchase.”

“Seige 13” and “The Purchase” are also in contention for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, to be awarded next week.

“‘Siege 13′ spans continents and decades, and in doing so illustrates once again that old maxim: the short story can be both as broad and as deep as a novel. These stories are never less than breathtaking,” Writers’ Trust jury members Lynn Coady, Esi Edugyan, and Drew Hayden Taylor — who read 116 books from 45 publishers — said in a statement.

The stories in “Seige 13” were born out of the author’s curiosity regarding his father experience surviving the siege from December 1944 to February 1945. In a recent interview with The Canadian Press, the author said the elder Dobozy rarely spoke about that period in his life.

“My father would say, ‘I left the cellar one morning for water and there on the pavement in front of me was a soldier’s head that had been crushed by a tank,” said Dobozy, a father of four who teaches English and film at Wilfrid Laurier University.

The Nanaimo, B.C., native’s previous work, “Last Notes and Other Stories,” won the Governor General’s Literary Award for French translation in 2007 (although the original English version wasn’t nominated).

Last year, he won The O. Henry Award for the short story “The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kalman Once Lived.”

Several prizes totalling $114,000 were given to Canadian writers at Wednesday’s 12th annual Writers’ Trust Awards.

Toronto’s Nino Ricci, who won the 1990 Governor General’s fiction prize for “Lives of the Saints,” took home the $25,000 Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award. The prize is for a body of work by a writer in mid-career.

Jean Little, a popular children’s author from Guelph, Ont., received the $20,000 Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.

Paul Yee, a Spalding, Sask., native who often writes about the Chinese-Canadian experience, won the $20,000 Vicky Metcalf Award for Children’s Literature.

And the $10,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize went to Alex Pugsley for the short story “Crisis on Earth-X.”

The Writers’ Trust of Canada is a charitable organization founded by authors including Margaret Atwood and the late Pierre Berton.