Trini-born writer Roffey wins Costa Book award
Wednesday 27 January 2021
WINNER S ROW: Trini-born writer Monique Roffey, the 2020 Costa Book of the Year winner for her novel The Mermaid of Black Conch. -
TRINIDAD-BORN writer Monique Roffey has been declared winner of the overall Costa Book of the Year award and with it, a £30,000 cheque.
She won for her novel The Mermaid of Black Conch (Peepal Tree Press), which is her sixth book.
The book, said the UK Guardian, was described as an utterly original piece by historian and broadcaster Suzannah Lipscomb, who chaired the panel of judges.
Roffey was announced winner at a virtual awards ceremony on Tuesday. Late Irish poet Eavan Boland and children’s author Natasha Farrant were in the running for the overall prize.
The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey (Peepal Tree) has won the £30,000 2020 Costa Book of the Year award.
The Costa Book Awards recognize “some of the most enjoyable books of the year, written by authors based in the UK and Ireland.” Each winner in the five individual categories receives £5,000. The Costa Book of the Year was selected from the category winners and announced in an online ceremony on January 26, 2021. This year’s final judges were Angellica Bell, Horatio Clare, Jill Dawson, Sadie Jones, Zaffar Kunial, Patrice Lawrence, Suzannah Lipscomb (chair), Stephen Mangan, and Simon Savidge.
For more information, including the complete list of winners, see the Costa website.
Last modified on Thu 28 Jan 2021 06.48 EST
Monique Roffey has won the £30,000 Costa book of the year award for her sixth novel, The Mermaid of Black Conch, which opens as a fisherman on a Caribbean island sees a “barnacled, seaweed-clotted” mermaid raise her head from the sea.
Suzannah Lipscomb, the historian and broadcaster who chaired the judges, said the novel was “utterly original – unlike anything we’ve ever read – and feels like a classic in the making from a writer at the height of her powers”. Based on a legend from the Taino, an indigenous people of the Caribbean,
the novel is a dark love story about fisherman David and Aycayia, a beautiful woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid, who has swum the Caribbean for centuries.
A dark love story between a fisherman and a mermaid has been named book of the year.
Judges crowned The Mermaid Of Black Conch: A Love Story the winner of the 2020 Costa Book of the Year.
Trinidadian-born British writer Monique Roffey penned the story which features a mermaid, cursed for her beauty and talent, torn from the sea.
Roffey, 55, told the PA news agency that love is not always seen as a valid subject for fiction.
“Sometimes it’s not seen as enough,” she said. “And I think it is.
“I think it’s time we wrote more about love, especially in these terrible times. I think it is something that deserves to be able to be the subject of a book.”
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