Colum McCann talks about winning the National Book Award (IrishCentral)

Irish novelist Colum McCann has won the prestigious 2009 National Book Award for Fiction for his novel “Let the Great World Spin,” a remarkable meditation on September 11, seen though the prism of an earlier decade.

McCann, the first Irish-born writer to win the award, picked up the prize as it was announced last Wednesday, but his abiding concern on the day, he told the IrishCentral’s sister publication the Irish Voice, was to find out if Ireland had won the qualifying match against France in the World Cup.

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