Award goes to 23 year old for child soldier tale

Michelle Pauli reports the son of Nigeria's current finance minister has won the prestigious award for a book based on his senior honors dissertation at Harvard.The book relates the adventures of a young boy who is conscripted into a guerrilla army in an unnamed West African country. Of course, many names would have been plausible, had the author decided to locate his fictional story in a particular country. Save the Children estimates that around 300,000 children are currently fighting in wars.

The book has already won several first fiction awards, and is in the running for the Dublin-Impac award, the richest literary prize in the world for a single work. The John Llewellyn Rhys prize carries a cash award of over ten thousand dollars, and membership in a elite club of alumni winners, including V.S Naipaul. William Boyd, and Zadie Smith.

Read more about the prize.