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.
New novel from Normal People author Sally Rooney due this September
Books
editor@leinsterleader.ie
The TV adaptation of Sally Rooney s Normal People starred Kildare actor Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones );
);
Fans of Normal People author Sally Rooney will keenly anticipate the release of her third novel this September.
Beautiful World, Where Are You, will be published by Faber on September 7.
The book will tell the story of Alice and Eileen, two best friends nearing their thirties in different places and on very different trajectories. As the summer approaches, they exchange emails about art, friendship, the world around them and the complicated love affairs unfolding in their own lives. They say they want to see each other again soon. But what will happen when they do?
[Many thanks to Peter Jordens for bringing this item to our attention.] Janine Mendes-Franco (
Global Voices) writes about Marina Salandy-Brown’s contributions to the arts and literary world, especially in the Anglophone Caribbean, and her recent recognition as Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and as recipient of Chile’s inaugural Ferdinand Magellan Award for Innovation.
For the last 10 years, Marina Salandy-Brown has been expanding the scope and reach of the NGC Bocas Lit Fest (named for its title sponsor, the National Gas Company of Trinidad and Tobago), now widely considered the Caribbean’s premier literary festival, but she’s been a reader all her life. Her passion for the region’s literature has now earned her an honorary fellowship in the Royal Society of Literature (RSL), which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart won the Booker Prize
The critics’ top eight choices based on Christmas selections in national newspapers, the London Evening Standard, the TLS, The Spectator and the New Statesman. Plus, we take a look at some of the other best books which were released in 2020.
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
The winner of this year’s Booker Prize is a tale of poverty, addiction and abuse set in and around Glasgow in the 1980s. Shuggie Bain’s mother is an alcoholic; his father, a violent, fitfully present taxi driver. As family members drift away, he becomes his mother’s sole carer – and it is their relationship that forms the novel’s emotional core. First-time author Douglas Stuart was praised for his poetic, slang-studded prose, and for his ability to find good in his characters, no matter how despicable their behaviour. Some critics, however, thought the book would have benefited from more rigorous editing.