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.
Costa Book of the Year: Utterly original Mermaid of Black Conch wins yahoo.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yahoo.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
2020 has been a tough year for the arts with cinemas and theatres closed and festivals and gigs cancelled. Despite this there has been an outpouring of creativity much of it inspired by the lockdown and Black Lives Matter. Socialist Review asked 10 of our readers and contributors to pick the culture they have most enjoyed under quarantine.
Schitt’s Creek - Netfliix
There’s nothing ground breaking about the central story line of Canadian comedy Schitt’s Creek (rags to riches in reverse), but one aspect of the approach is certainly refreshing. The show doesn’t get everything right; the only black character is the (fantastically sardonic) town councillor Ronnie, for example. What it does do well, in my opinion, is it’s treatment of the central character’s pan-sexuality. When actor Dan Levy, who co-wrote the show and plays David, was interviewed about it he said they had considered how to deal with David’s sexuality and in the end decided that, as in life, it just shoul
This year’s Meeting Ground Christmas edition features the works of poets from New Zealand and Jamaica. For this first instalment, the featured Jamaican poets are in the diaspora but born and mostly raised in Jamaica. In their work is the dialogue between the Jamaican Christmas past and the American Christmas present, reminding us, too, of Claude McKay’s “Flame Heart”, with the poinsettias red, blood-red in warm December. Here’s to a heart-warming Christmas and blissful reading!
– Ann-Margaret Lim (Jamaica)
Kia Ora (Welcome in Maori). It is a great pleasure for us poets in New Zealand to be sharing poetry and Manawa (Breath) with our brothers and sisters in Jamaica at this time of the year. We share so much common ground in our island nations – the love of the sea, mountains and friendly faces. Thank you so much for sharing with us. Arohanui (much love and deep affection).