The results of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award competition, sponsored by the libraries of Dublin, were announced today.

From a shortlist that included Marilynne Robinson and Joseph O'Neill, Gerbrand Bakker of the Netherlands was selected as winner of the one-hundred-thousand-euro prize (approximately $124,000), of which a quarter will go to his translator, David Colmer, for The Twin (Harvill Secker).

The judges, Anne Fine, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Eve Patten, Abdourahman Waberi, and Zoë Wicomb, praised the "sparely written" novel for its narrator's "odd small cruelties, laconic humor and surprising tendernesses." The book is available in the United States from the small press Archipelago Books.

"It's wonderful," Bakker said after hearing news of the prize, the Guardian reported. "But for me it was also wonderful to read the book in English— I said to David, the translator, 'Who wrote this book?' I didn't recognize it; I thought it was very good. It made me realize it really is a book, and I am a writer."

Bakker, also a licensed gardener, reportedly has plans to buy a horse with his winnings. "In Holland we've got these huge grey horses that are very sweet and I would like to own one," he said. "I'm not a rider but I just love these big beasts. They're so kind. You
can lie on top of them every day for ten minutes, not ride them—and then feed them a carrot or ten."

[Correction: Gerbrand Bakker's country of residence was incorrectly stated in the original blog post. Bakker is a resident of the Netherlands.]