Debut author Szalay wins Geoffrey Faber prize

Debut novelist David Szalay has won The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Fiction 2009 for his title London and the South-East (Vintage).

Szalay picked up the £1,000 for his comic novel about the world of work. The Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize is awarded annually and is given on alternate years for a volume of verse and for a volume of prose fiction. No submissions for the prize are made.

The award was this year was judged by authors Kate Summerscale and Andrew Miller, and journalist Boyd Tonkin.

The judges said: "David's novel was, from its first lines, immensely readable. He has caught perfectly the atmosphere of the world he describes. His style is authoritative, poised and exact. This is work of a very high order indeed, and against some extraordinarily talented opposition David is a very worthy winner."