Source : Globe & Mail

It has been a dizzying but remunerative week for Toronto emergency-room doctor Vincent Lam.

Less than 48 hours after his first book, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, won Canada's biggest literary award, the $40,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, it was announced that the book will be made into a TV series for The Movie Network.

Toronto's Shaftesbury Films confirmed yesterday that it had successfully concluded negotiations with Dr. Lam and his agents, Anne McDermid and Shain Jaffe, for the production, which is expected to air in 2008.

The deal was agreed to verbally on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after Dr. Lam, 32, was named the 13th annual Giller winner at a gala ceremony in Toronto. The signing occurred Thursday afternoon.

"I'm thrilled to see that my book has started to take on a life of its own," Dr. Lam said in a statement yesterday.

Shaftesbury chair Christina Jennings said she started to read the 12 linked short stories in Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures in September, right around the time the book was included among the 15 titles on the Giller Prize nominee list.

"I loved it," she said in an interview, "and I thought right away there's a series here" -- something with which TMN concurred as Shaftesbury's pay-TV broadcast partner. Once Bloodletting was named one of the five short-listed titles in October, discussions began in earnest.

Ms. Jennings described the Lam stories -- which follow the lives of four young University of Toronto-trained doctors from their days and nights in medical school to their professional careers in Canada and elsewhere -- as "extraordinarily filmic."

She predicted the series will "be staying pretty true to" Dr. Lam's stories. Moreover, the author will be a consultant for the series and "may even come up with new stuff" as episodes are being drafted.

It has not been decided whether the initial season will feature 8 to 10 episodes or, perhaps, 13.

© Globe and Mail