Neil Gaiman won the Hugo award for best novel in Montreal on Sunday for his young adult tale The Graveyard Book. The Hugos reward excellence in science fiction and fantasy. (Philippe Matas/HarperCollins/Associated Press)

The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman's story of a boy who is raised by ghosts, has collected another major award, picking up the Hugo science fiction award for best novel.

Gaiman, a Brit who now lives near Minneapolis, Minn., was named the winner at the end of the annual World Science Fiction Convention in Montreal on Sunday night.

The Hugo awards reward excellence in science fiction and fantasy. Entries are voted by sci-fi fans who are members of the World Science Fiction Society, the organizer of the annual convention, known as Worldcon.

The Graveyard Book — about a boy who escapes the murder of his family and takes refuge in a cemetery — already garnered the Locus Magazine's prize for young adult book as well as the U.S. John Newberry medal for best children's fiction.

Gaiman – whose previous horror-fantasy books include the Sandman series, Stardust and Coraline, which was made into an animated stop-motion 3-D feature film that won critical acclaim— beat out:

• Neal Stephenson, Anathem.
• Charles Stross, Saturn's Children.
• Cory Doctorow, Little Brother.
• John Scalzi, Zoe's Tale.

Gaiman, who has won the Hugo award three times before, said he felt the prize should have gone to Anathem. He was in Montreal to accept the award and was the convention's guest of honour.

The reluctant winner revealed on his blog on Monday that he didn't want to enter his book this year.

Gaiman declined a 2006 Hugo nomination for Anansi Boys because he wanted more attention to focus on other writers, who aren't as well known.

This time, he was convinced by Charles N. Brown, editor-in-chief of Locus, who died in July.

"[He] told me not to decline the nomination," Gaiman said. "He was astonishingly firm and bossy about it."