Louise Erdrich's story of a woman who is attacked on a North Dakota reservation has beaten high-profile novels by Junot Díaz, Kevin Powers and Dave Eggers to win America's prestigious National Book award.
Erdrich's The Round House – already named book of the year by Amazon.com earlier this week – took the $10,000 National Book award for fiction at a ceremony in New York last night. Her novel, set on a reservation for the Native American Ojibwe people in 1988, follows the investigations of 13-year-old Joe into an assault on his traumatised mother.
Erdrich accepted the award in both Ojibwe and English, speaking of "the grace and endurance of native women".
"This is a book about a huge case of injustice ongoing on reservations. Thank you for giving it a wider audience," she said, according to the New York Times. Erdrich has written 14 novels, and has previously been shortlisted for the National Book award and the Pulitzer prize. She is also the owner of an independent bookshop, Birchbark Books.
The non-fiction prize was won by Katherine Boo for her investigation into life in a Mumbai slum, Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Boo is also shortlisted for the Guardian first book award, and missed out on the Samuel Johnson prize to Wade Davis earlier this week.
"If this prize means anything, it is that small stories in so-called hidden places matter because they implicate and complicate what we consider to be the larger story, which is the story of people who do have political and economic powers," she said.
The National Book award for poetry went to David Ferry for Bewilderment, while William Alexander's Goblin Secrets took the young people's literature prize. The ceremony also saw Elmore Leonard presented with a medal for his distinguished contribution to American letters. Accepting the award, Leonard said it had "energised" him, reported the Los Angeles Times.
"The only thing I've ever wanted to do with my life is have a good time writing stories," he said. "This award tells me I'm still at it."
