In 2018, Esi Edugyan won her second Scotiabank Giller Prize for her historical novel Washington Black. At once a thrilling adventure tale in the best 19th-century tradition and a moving portrait of a young black slave on the verge of freedom, it confirmed Edugyan as one of Canada’s most exciting novelists.
Like her previous Giller winner, 2011’s Half-Blood Blues, it was also a finalist for the international Man Booker Prize. Not only that, former U.S. president Barack Obama named it one of his favourite books last year.
Edugyan wrote her tempestuous novel in the tranquil surroundings of her ocean-view home outside Victoria, B.C. The three-storey house, which she shares with her husband, poet and novelist Steven Price, and their two young children, is a readers’ paradise.
On the ground floor is a guest room/library devoted to their collection of more than 5,000 books.