Toronto author André Alexis’s novel Fifteen Dogs has won the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the second major literary award in the past week claimed by the philosophical tale of canine consciousness.

Even with his recent momentum, Alexis looked stunned as he took the stage to claim the prize, the first Giller for his long-running Toronto publisher.

“This is most unexpected,” he said, before thanking his family and friends. “I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to win this in the 50th year of Coach House’s existence. Thank you all so much.”

The book beat out a field including: Samuel Archibald’s fantastical, Quebec-set short-story collection Arvida; Toronto-born, London-based author Rachel Cusk’s Outline, a novel about a writer’s series of enlightening conversations during a trip to Athens; Montrealer Heather O’Neill’s grown-up fairy tale collection Daydreams of Angels; and Anakana Schofield’s experimental Martin John, about a troubled Londoner and his repellent sexual proclivities.

For a second consensus-free year in a row, Giller prognosticators were all over the place when asked to pinpoint a front-runner.

“It’s almost Game of Thrones — you don’t know who’s going to come out alive out of the bloodbath,” joked Archibald.

It’s also a year in which the Giller selections — culled from 168 submissions by five international judges — were not exactly in lockstep with the bestseller list. After all, two short-story collections, two works of philosophical literary fiction and, well, a book about a compulsive sexual deviant do not necessarily coalesce into a bookseller’s dream display.

“Our committee discussed whether the judges should just pick books that are popular and people will want to read. One guy said that on that basis, War and Peace would never have made it,” said prize founder Jack Rabinovitch before the gala. “You’ve gotta find a balance.”

The authors were slightly more forceful.

“A bestseller is something that is selling itself, and it’s the goal of prizes like this to create readership for books that people don’t find so easy to buy,” Cusk said.

Even as nerves gnawed away at the nominated authors prior to the Rick Mercer-hosted gala, they gratefully soaked up the experience.

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O’Neill navigated the red carpet alongside presenter Measha Brueggergosman, who teased the author about placing a losing bet on her book at the last Giller gala. The in-house stylists were a resounding hit, too. Archibald marvelled at his own debonair duds: “I didn’t get to wear a tux at my wedding, so this will be my only chance unless I end up playing James Bond someday.”

And Schofield was a magnetic presence, flexing for a bay of cameras as she worked the room with her teenage son (she claimed the two of them spent the day dancing to One Direction in her hotel room).

“I would say (my stylist) faced the biggest professional challenge of her career,” said Schofield, in a purple-hued floral dress. “I’ve got a body like an 8-year-old boy with boobs. I’m very short, and I don’t wear long things. I have not worn a dress this long since my first Holy Communion in 1976.

“This stylist performed a clothing miracle.”