Colm Toibin’s ‘The Magician’ wins Folio Prize for literature

LONDON (AP) — “The Magician” by Irish writer Colm Toibin has won Britain’s Rathbones Folio Prize for literature. Toibin’s fictionalized account of the life of German writer Thomas Mann beat seven other finalists to the multi-genre 30,000 pound ($40,000) prize on Tuesday. Toibin, whose novels include “Brooklyn” and “The Master,” was a previous Folio Prize finalist in 2015 for “Nora Webster.” The jury of three other writers called Toibin’s book “a capacious, generous, ambitious novel.” Founded in 2013, the Folio Prize is open to fiction, nonfiction and poetry from anywhere in the world published in Britain. This year’s finalists came from the U.K., Ireland and South Africa.