Lee Henderson's The Man Game won the fiction category of the 2009 B.C. Book Prizes. Lee Henderson's The Man Game won the fiction category of the 2009 B.C. Book Prizes. (Penguin Canada)

Authors Lee Henderson and Gabor Maté have captured the fiction and non-fiction awards of the B.C. Book Prizes.

Henderson's book, The Man Game, examines a secret sport created in 1886 that changes the course of Vancouver's history.

The novel is described as an "epic tale of love requited and not, that crosses the contemporary and historical in an extravagant, anarchistic retelling."

It beat a couple of other notable books including Steven Galloway's much acclaimed The Cellist of Sarajevo and Patrick Lane's Red Dog Red Dog.

In the non-fiction category, Gabor Maté examines the epidemic of addictions in society and proposes a compassionate approach to helping drug addicts in his book In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction.

Maté is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.

Other winners announced at the gala in Vancouver on Saturday night include:

  • REGIONAL PRIZE: Stephen Hume, Simon Fraser: In Search of Modern British Columbia.
  • CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: Polly Horvath, My One Hundred Adventures.
  • BC BOOKSELLERS' CHOICE AWARD. Stephen Bown and Douglas & McIntyre, Madness, Betrayal and the Lash: The Epic Voyage of Captain George Vancouver.
  • POETRY: Daphne Marlatt, The Given.

All winners receive $2,000.

Journalist Terry Glavin was already announced as winner of the $9,000 Lieutenant-Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. The trophy is given to a person who has contributed to the literary life of the province.