The winner of the Commonwealth Writers first book prize, Mohammed Hanif, complained to the audience at Auckland's Aotea Centre tonight that he was a victim of racism when he arrived in the country.
The Pakistan-born writer told the audience as he accepted his award he had been held up by immigration authorities for about three hours.
Mr Hanif is a journalist who has worked for the BBC and the Washington Post.
When asked later if he considered the hold-up was due to racism, he said, "yes".
Mr Hanif won the first book award for his novel A Case of Exploding Mangoes.
The book takes a spin on why the Hercules C130 aircraft crashed on August 17, 1988, killing Pakistan's military dictator General Zia ul Haq.
Christos Tsiolkas of Australia won the Best Book award for The Slap, a tale about middle-class suburban Australia and its notions of child-rearing and acceptable behaviour.
The awards celebrate cutting-edge fiction from across the four regions of the Commonwealth: Asia; Canada and the Caribbean; Europe and South Asia; and South East Asia and the Pacific.