“This took me completely by surprise,” NBC News special correspondent Martin Fletcher tells TVNewser.

Martin has been named a 2010 National Jewish Book Award winner for writing Walking Israel: A Personal Search for the Soul of a Nation.

“It must have been a poor year for books,” Fletcher jokes.  “But I’m thrilled. I left NBC mostly to follow my dream and write books, at a time when publishing is even in more trouble than broadcasting, so it’s reassuring to receive such a boost.”

Fletcher, a former Tel Aviv bureau chief, began reporting again for the network this past July after leaving NBC in December of 2009 and focusing on his career as an author. Fletcher’s third book, The List – a novel set in London in 1945 – is due out this fall.