ESSENCE MAGAZINE has given its 2008 Award for Fiction to Jamaican author Margaret Cezair-Thompson for her book, The Pirate Princess.

Distributed by Unbridled Books, The Pirate Princess was a sleeper hit in the United States and Britain. It is loosely based on the life of Hollywood legend Errol Flynn, who lived in Port Antonio from the late 1940s to his death in 1959.

In The Pirate Princess, the Australia-born Flynn fathers a daughter by the teenaged daughter of his Jamaican friend. The story follows her turbulent life into adulthood.

The book has received strong reviews: "Cezair-Thompson promises her readers a 'tropical adventure'. She evokes spectacular shipwrecks and deserted islands, infamous buccaneers and glamorous celebrities. And the story that follows makes good on these promises," read The New York Times review.

"Jamaica comes alive in all its tropical splendour" was Bookmarks Magazine's take on the novel.

Margaret Cezair-Thompson is the daughter of Pan-Africanist and former Jamaica government minister and senator Dudley Thompson. She read from The Pirate Princess at the Calabash Literary Festival in St Elizabeth in May.