William Finnegan's surfing tour de force Barbarian Days adds the Bookie Prize to his Pulitzer Prize
WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016 The winner is announced Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life. By William Finnegan (Corsair) £9.99 William Finnegan (centre) shows off the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, flanked by (left-to-right) judges Graham Sharpe, Alyson Rudd, Hugh McIlvanney, Mark Lawson, John Inverdale and Clarke Carlisle. Surfing memoir Barbarian Days, described as “compelling, elegiac and profound” by the chair of the judging panel, has won the 2016 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award for American author William Finnegan. The book, which has already won a Pulitzer Prize for the veteran New Yorker magazine writer, tells the story of Finnegan life through the prism of his 50-year obsession with surfing, from his childhood days in California and Hawaii to the present day. Barbarian Days beat a particularly strong field to land the £28,000 cash prize that goes with the award, which also comes with a leather-bound commemorative cop