I’m sure Vincent Lam was the most astonished person in the room when his book was announced as the Giller winner last night at a gala in Toronto. All the pre-award-anouncement buzz has been about Rawi Hage’s book detailing the friendship of two young men set against the backdrop of the civil war in Lebanon, De Niro’s Game. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures was the only one of the finalists to have been published by a major house. Until now though, I hadn’t heard that Lam’s path to having his book published was even more an instance of spectacular good fortune than Hage’s, whose book was snatched from an indie publisher’s slush pile.

It started with a chance meeting between a doctor on a cruise ship and literary icon Margaret Atwood. He told her he was an aspiring writer. She asked him if he wanted her to be nice or be honest. He said “honest” and she agreed to read the half-written manuscript of his first book. She e-mailed him back a few months later saying “Congratulations. You can write.” She helped him get a book deal and last night Vincent Lam won Canada’s most prestigious book award.