Mal peet wins the Guardian Fiction Prize 2009 for Exposure

Mal Peet has won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize 2009 with Exposure, the third in a series of novels about footballers. This modern retelling of Othello casts the Moor of Venice and his popstar wife Desmerelds (Dezi) as a South American football star (like David and Victoria Beckham).

Here, the villainous Iago becomes Diego, Otello's agent. And the story's different strands are held together by sports journalist Paul Faustino, a regular in Peet's books who follows the story of Otello's transfer to club Rialto. The bones of Shakespeare's play jut through the text, which Peet divides into five acts.

You can read more about it in The Guardian here.

Exposure beat out these titles for the prize

Genesis by Bernard Beckett
Solace of the Road by Siobhan Dowd
The Silver Blade by Sally Gardner
Then by Morris Gleitzman
Rowan the Strange by Julie Hearn
Nation by Terry Pratchett
Revolver by Marcus Sedgwick

Past winners of the prize (the only children's award in which authors are judged by their peers), which has been running since 1968, include Philip Pullman, Ted Hughes, Anne Fine and Jacqueline Wilson. Patrick Ness won last year for The Knife of Never Letting Go.

I don't usually read sports-themed books, I must admit, but this looks really good!