J.K. Rowling takes home Outstanding Achievement Award at U.K. Nibbies

London, April 10 : Harry Potter author J K Rowling won an Outstanding Achievement award and praise from Prime Minister Gordon Brown at this year's Galaxy British Book Awards, also known as the Nibbies.

The award was Rowling's fifth Nibbie win, having previously won the children's book category twice, as well as the author and book of the year categories.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who presented the award, said: "She has joined a distinguished line of British authors whose work has got the whole country reading, and whose books will be read for many years to come by successive generations."

Meanwhile author Ian McEwan was crowned the Author of the Year for On Chesil Beach (Cape), which was also named the Book of the Year.

Other winners were Russell Brand, whose My Booky Wook (Hodder) won the biography category; Khaled Hosseini, whose A Thousand Splendid Suns (Bloomsbury) was voted the "Richard and Judy" Best Read by the general public; and crime writer Patricia Cornwell, who won the crime thriller award for her novel Book of the Dead (Little, Brown).

The Spice Girls singer Geri Halliwell presented the best-selling children's author Francesca Simon with the WH Smith Children's Book of the Year for Horrid Henry and the Abominable Snowman.

The awards, billed as the U.K. publishing industry's answer to the Oscars, were decided entirely by public voting.

ANI