OTTAWA -- Former Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam has been shortlisted for the $25,000 Governor General's Literary Awards for his sweeping Vietnam saga "The Headmaster's Wager."
Others who made the cut include Tamas Dobozy of Kitchener, Ont., for "Siege 13" (Thomas Allen Publishers) and Toronto's Linda Spalding for "The Purchase" (McClelland & Stewart).
Spalding and Dobozy are also up for the $25,000 Rogers Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize.
Rounding out the list was Toronto's Robert Hough for "Dr. Brinkley's Tower" (House of Anansi Press) and Carrie Snyder of Waterloo, Ont., for "The Juliet Stories" (Anansi).
Lam, a Toronto emergency room doctor, won the 2006 Giller for "Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures."
"The Headmaster's Wager" (Doubleday Canada) tells the story of Percival Chen -- the Chinese headmaster of an English school in Saigon at the time of the Vietnam War. He has said the titular character was partially inspired by his grandfather.
Finalists for the Governor General's non-fiction prizes include CBC reporter Nahlah Ayed for her memoir "A Thousand Farewells: A Reporter's Journey from Refugee Camp to the Arab Spring" (Viking) and Noah Richler for "What We Talk About When We Talk About War" (Goose Lane Editions).
Also on that list is Ross King of Woodstock, U.K. (originally from North Portal, Sask.) for "Leonardo and the Last Supper" (Bond Street Books); Vancouver's Wade Davis for "Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest" (Alfred A. Knopf Canada); and Carol Bishop-Gwyn of Toronto for "The Pursuit of Perfection: A Life of Celia Franca" (Cormorant Books).
English and French-language finalists were also announced in the categories of drama, poetry, children's text, children's illustration and translation.
The finalists were chosen out of approximately 1,700 books.
The winners will be announced Nov. 13 in Montreal.
