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LONDON (AP) — American writer George Saunders has won the 40,000 pound ($67,000) Folio Prize for literature with his humorous and disturbing short-story collection "Tenth of December."
The chair of the judging panel, poet Lavinia Greenlaw, said Monday that Saunders' "darkly playful" stories explore "the human self under ordinary and extraordinary pressure."
Saunders beat seven other finalists, including Kent Haruf, Rachel Kushner, Anne Carson and Eimear McBride.
Saunders has won acclaim for his satirically edged short stories, and last week won the Story Prize for short fiction.
His tales place characters with recognizable human emotions in quietly unsettling situations. In one story in "Tenth of December," a man is used as a guinea pig in unusual drug trials, while another features women trafficked to be human lawn ornaments.
He's probably best known outside literary circles for a commencement speech to Syracuse University's class of 2013, whose key message was: "Try to be kinder." It went viral on the Internet and will soon be published as a book.
The Folio Prize is in its first year and hopes to rival the Booker Prize as the English-speaking world's most prestigious literary award. It is open to any book published in Britain in the previous year, which has led some in the U.K. literary world to fear it will become U.S.-dominated.
Five of the eight finalists for this year's prize were American.
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Online: www.thefolioprize.com
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