Not Your Plucky, Feelgood Cancer Memoir

It is the convention of awards-ceremony etiquette for the winner to perform a convincing impression of bashful disbelief. The man I meet just hours before he was awarded the Guardian First Book award last Thursday has just stepped off a flight from New York, however, only an hour ago, and his bearing doesn't say "What, little old me? Wow!" so much as "So what time is it here anyway?"