Huge congratulations to Eva Hornung, who has won the 2010 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Fiction for her novel Dog Boy.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Minister for the Arts Simon Crean announced the four award winners in a ceremony in Melbourne this morning. Eva, along with winners Grace Karskens (non-fiction), Bill Condon (YA fiction) and Lorraine Marwood (children’s fiction), was awarded $100,000.

Dog Boy tells the story of a child abandoned in a big city by his mother and raised by animals. The judges, Peter Pierce, John A Hay and Lyn Gallacher, described it as, ‘A testing but triumphant feat of the imagination…The resonances of the novel are bleak and unsettling, but the resolution is both shocking and apt, the experiment and the manner of its telling have a compelling assurance.’

Eva responded to the win by saying, ‘I am amazed and grateful. I had no expectations that the book would win—I was simply delighted to be shortlisted in such wonderful company. I am very busy just now with the imminent hay harvest, but I have not managed to do much except roam around the paddocks and woodlands since I heard. This comes at a good time—not only for establishing my small farm, but also as encouragement for me as a writer.’

Well done, Eva! It is a brilliant and much-deserved win.