Press
Press Release
01/04/2010
Costa Book Awards 2009 Category Winners Announced
* Irish author Colm Toibin triumphs over Man Booker Prize winner
Hilary Mantel to win the Costa Novel Award for Brooklyn
*
Debut biographer Graham Farmelo collects the Costa Biography Award for his first
work, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum
Genius
* Former scooter salesman Raphael Selbourne scoops the
Costa First Novel Award for
Beauty
London, 19.30pm 4th
January 2010: Costa, the UK's fastest-growing coffee shop chain, today
announces the Costa Book Awards 2009 winners in the Novel, First Novel,
Biography, Poetry and Children's Book categories.
The Costa
Book Awards recognise some of the most outstanding and enjoyable books of the
last year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.
Originally
established in 1971 by Whitbread PLC, Costa announced its takeover of the
sponsorship of the UK's popular and prestigious book prize in
2006.
The five successful authors who will now compete for the 2009
Costa Book of the Year are:
* Irish novelist Colm Toibin who beats
Hilary Mantel, winner of the 2009 Man Booker Prize, to take the Costa Novel
Award for Brooklyn, his sixth novel
* Raphael Selbourne who wins
the First Novel Award for Beauty, the story of a young Bangladeshi
woman on the run from her family, inspired by his experiences of teaching in a
deprived area of Wolverhampton
* Debut biographer Graham Farmelo who takes
the Biography Award for his work on the pioneer of quantum mechanics, The
Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius, which the
judges called "the most compelling biography of the year"
* Christopher Reid
who, having been nominated twice previously, finally claims the Poetry Award for
A Scattering, a tribute to his wife following her death in 2005
*
Patrick Ness who wins the Children's Book Award for The Ask and the Answer
(Book Two of the Chaos Walking trilogy) which the judges acclaimed as "a
major achievement in the making"
"The Costa Book Awards have an
excellent track record of recognising and celebrating some of the very best
current British writing, and books that can be enjoyed by everyone," said John
Derkach, Managing Director, Costa. "We're very proud to be announcing such
an outstanding collection of books which we know people will enjoy
reading."
The five Costa Book Award winners, each of whom will
receive ?5,000, were selected from 592 entries. The five books are now eligible
for the ultimate prize - the 2009 Costa Book of the Year.
The winner, selected by a panel of judges chaired by novelist
Josephine Hart and including Marie Helvin, Caroline Quentin, Gary Kemp, Dervla
Kirwan and Tom Bradby, will be announced at an awards ceremony hosted by Penny
Smith at Quaglino's in central London on Tuesday 26th January
2010.
"Our final judges will have a tough time selecting just one
from these five for the title of Costa Book of the Year," added John Derkach,
"but it makes for a very exciting awards ceremony later this
month."
Since the introduction of the Book of the Year award in
1985, it has been won nine times by a novel, four times by a first novel, five
times by a biography, five times by a collection of poetry and once by a
children's book. The 2008 Costa Book of the Year was The Secret
Scripture by Sebastian Barry.
For additional information go to
http://www.costabookawards.com/
Full details of the Category Award Winners follow.
-
ends-
For further press information or to arrange an
interview with any of the winning authors, please contact:
Amanda
Johnson
Costa Book Awards Press and Publicity
Telephone: 020 7751 2085
(direct line) or 07715 922180 (mobile)
Email: amanda@amandajohnsonpr.com
2009
Costa Book Award Winners
Costa Novel Award:
Brooklyn Colm Toibin
Costa First Novel Award:
Beauty Raphael Selbourne
Costa Biography Award: The
Strangest Man Graham Farmelo
Costa Poetry Award: A
Scattering Christopher Reid
Costa Children's Book Award: The
Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking, Book Two) Patrick
Ness
Previous Books of the Year
2008 The Secret Scripture Sebastian Barry
Novel
2007 Day A.L. Kennedy
Novel
2006 The Tenderness of Wolves Stef Penney
First Novel
2005 Matisse: the Master Hilary
Spurling Biography
2004 Small Island Andrea
Levy Novel
2003 The Curious Incident of the Dog in
the Night-Time Mark Haddon Novel
2002
Samuel Pepys:The Unequalled Self Claire Tomalin
Biography
2001 The Amber Spyglass Philip
Pullman Children's Book
2000 English Passengers
Matthew Kneale Novel
1999 Beowulf
Seamus Heaney Poetry
1998 Birthday Letters
Ted Hughes Poetry
1997 Tales from Ovid
Ted Hughes Poetry
1996 The Spirit Level
Seamus Heaney Poetry
1995 Behind the Scenes
at the Museum Kate Atkinson First Novel
1994
Felicia's Journey William Trevor Novel
1993
Theory of War Joan Brady Novel
1992
Swing Hammer Swing! Jeff Torrington First Novel
1991 A Life of Picasso John Richardson
Biography
1990 Hopeful Monsters Nicholas
Mosley Novel
1989 Coleridge: Early Visions
Richard Holmes Biography
1988 The Comforts
of Madness Paul Sayer First Novel
1987
Under the Eye of the Clock Christopher Nolan Biography
1986 An Artist of the Floating World Kazuo Ishiguro
Novel
1985 Elegies Douglas Dunn
Poetry
2009 Costa Novel Award
Brooklyn by Colm
Toibin
Viking
About the book:
In a
small town in the south-east of Ireland in the 1950s, Eilis Lacey is one among
many of her generation who cannot find work at home. So when a job is offered in
America, it is clear that she must go. Leaving her family and home, Eilis sets
off to forge a new life for herself in Brooklyn. Young, homesick and alone, she
gradually buries the pain of parting beneath the rhythms of a new life - days at
the till in a large department store, night classes in Brooklyn College and
Friday evenings on the dance floor of the parish hall - until she realises that
she has found a sort of happiness. But when tragic news summons her back to
Ireland, and the constrictions of her old life unexpectedly give way to new
possibilities, she finds herself facing a terrible choice between love and
happiness in the land where she belongs and the promises she must keep on the
far side of the ocean.
About the author:
Colm
Toibin was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford in the southeast of Ireland in 1955.
He studied History and English at University College Dublin, before moving to
Barcelona where he lived for three years. He returned to Dublin in 1978, and in
1981, became Features Editor of In Dublin before joining Magill, then Ireland's
main current affairs magazine, as Editor, where he stayed until 1985. He has
since written variously for The Sunday Independent, The London Review of Books
and The New York Review of Books.
He is the author of five other
novels, including The South, The Heather Blazing and The Story of the Night. His
most recent novels, The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, were both
shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His books have been translated into
eighteen languages and he will publish a collection of short stories, The Empty
Family, in 2010.
What the judges said:
"Poised, quiet and incrementally shattering - we all loved this
book and can't praise it highly
enough."
Judges
Sarah Clarke: Co-owner, The
Torbay Bookshop
Rebecca Jones: Arts correspondent, BBC
Neil Pearson:
Actor and writer
Shortlist, selected from a total of 155
entries:
Penelope Lively: Family Album (Fig Tree)
Hilary Mantel:
Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate)
Christopher Nicholson: The Elephant Keeper (Fourth
Estate)
Previous Novel Award winners include:
Sebastian Barry
The Secret Scripture 2008
A.L. Kennedy Day 2007
William Boyd Restless 2006
Ali Smith The Accidental
2005
Andrea Levy Small Island 2004
Mark Haddon The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time 2003
2009 Costa First Novel Award
Beauty by Raphael Selbourne
Tindal Street
Press
About the book:
Beauty - in name and
appearance - is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having disgraced
her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Placed on the jobseekers'
treadmill and under continuing domestic pressure, in desperation she runs away.
Her fractious encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants and passers-by in
the city streets, exacerbated by the restrictions (and comfort) of her language
and culture, place her at the mercy of such unlikely helpers as Mark, a friendly
Staffordshire Bull Terrier-breeding ex-offender, and Peter, a middle-class
underachiever. Determined and spirited, yet tormented by doubts, Beauty is
forced to examine her own beliefs and think seriously about her future. While
her brothers search for her across the city, the conflict between her desire for
personal freedom and her sense of family duty deepens. What will she
do?
About the author:
Raphael Selbourne
was born in Oxford in 1968 to a literary family. His father, David Selbourne, is
an historian, philosopher and expert on South Asia and the Middle East who has
written several books, and his grandfather, Hugh Selbourne, was a renowned
doctor, bibliophile and diarist. Selbourne lived in Italy for several
years, where he worked variously as a teacher, translator, sold television
advertising and scooters, before moving back to the West Midlands in 2004. Most
recently, he has taught Maths and English to the long-term unemployed in
Wolverhampton where he still lives.
What the judges said:
"Pitch perfect on every level - we loved this
book."
Judges:
Nikki Bedi: Presenter, BBC
Asian Network
Sandra Howard: Author
Matt Taylor: Owner, The Chepstow
Bookshop
Shortlist, selected from a total of 102
entries:
Rachel Heath: The Finest Type of English Womanhood
(Hutchinson)
Peter Murphy: John the Revelator (Faber and Faber)
Ali Shaw:
The Girl With Glass Feet (Atlantic Books)
Previous First Novel Award winners include:
Sadie
Jones The Outcast 2008
Catherine O'Flynn What Was Lost
2007
Stef Penney The Tenderness of Wolves 2006
Tash Aw
The Harmony Silk Factory 2005
Susan Fletcher Eve Green
2004
DBC Pierre Vernon God Little 2003
2009 Costa Biography Award
The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius by Graham
Farmelo
Faber and Faber
About the book:
The greatest British physicist since Newton, Paul Dirac was a
pioneer of quantum mechanics and was regarded as an equal by Albert Einstein. He
predicted, purely from what he saw in his equations, the existence of
antimatter. One of the youngest theoreticians to win the Nobel Prize for
Physics, he was also pathologically reticent, strangely literal-minded and
almost completely unable to communicate or empathise. Based on a previously
undiscovered archive of family papers in Florida, Graham Farmelo celebrates
Dirac's massive scientific achievement while drawing a compassionate portrait of
his life and the people around him.
About the author:
Graham Farmelo is a writer, international consultant in science
communication and former theoretical physicist and Good Food Guide restaurant
inspector. He is also Senior Research Fellow at the Science Museum, London, and
Adjunct Professor of Physics at Northeastern University, Boston, USA.
Born in 1953, Farmelo was brought up in Orpington and went to the
University of Liverpool, where he gained his PhD in 1977. In 1990, he moved to
the Science Museum, where he developed the vision and plans for the Wellcome
Wing and subsequently directed its exhibitions. Elected Fellow of the Institute
of Physics in 1998, in 2002 Farmelo edited the best-selling It Must be
Beautiful: Great Equations of Modern Science, a collection of essays on the
great equations of modern science. In 2003, he left the museum to begin his
biography of Paul Dirac, a work that took him six years to research and write.
He lives in London.
What the judges said:
"The
extraordinary mind and achievements of Britain's Einstein are rendered here in
the most compelling biography of the year."
Judges:
Robert Lacey: Biographer and historian
Ben Macintyre: Writer
and journalist
Caroline Mileham: Head of Books,
PLAY.com
Shortlist,
selected from a total of 133 entries:
William Fiennes: The Music
Room (Picador)
Simon Gray: Coda Co-published by (Granta Books and Faber and
Faber)
Caroline Moorehead: Dancing to the Precipice (Chatto & Windus)
Previous Biography Award winners include:
Diana
Athill Somewhere Towards the End 2008
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Young Stalin 2007
Brian Thompson Keeping Mum 2006
Hilary
Spurling Matisse: the Master 2005
John Guy My Heart is My Own:
The Life of Mary Queen of Scots 2004
DJ Taylor Orwell: The Life
2003
2009 Costa Poetry Award
A Scattering by Christopher Reid
Arete
Books
About the book:
Lucinda Gane,
Christopher Reid's wife, died in October 2005. A Scattering is his tribute to
her and consists of four poetic sequences, the first written during her final
illness, and the other three at intervals after her
death.
About the author:
Christopher Reid was
born in Hong Kong in 1949. He studied at Oxford before becoming a journalist and
book reviewer. He was Poetry Editor at Faber and Faber from 1991 to 1999, and
Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Hull from 2007 to 2009. He
also runs his own independent publishing house, Ondt and Gracehoper, and is a
fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Reid's poetry
collections include Arcadia (1979), which won both the Somerset Maugham Award
and the Hawthornden prize, Katerina Brac (1985) and All Sorts, his first book of
poems for children, which won the Signal Poetry Award in 2000.
A
Scattering and The Song of Lunch were both published in 2009. As well as the
Costa Poetry Award, A Scattering has also been nominated for Britain's two other
top poetry awards - the Forward Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize for
Poetry. He was twice nominated for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His edition of
Letters of Ted Hughes, published originally in 2007, was recently released in
paperback. He lives in London.
What the judges said:
"Intensely moving, compelling and honest - this is a highly
readable collection of wonderful
poems."
Judges:
Chloe Garner: Director, Ledbury
Poetry Festival
Sophie Hannah: Crime Fiction Writer and Poet
Tom Fleming:
Deputy Editor, Literary
Review
Shortlist,
selected from a total of 100 entries:
Clive James: Angels Over
Elsinore (Picador Poetry)
Katharine Kilalea: One Eye'd Leigh (Carcanet
Press)
Ruth Padel Darwin: A Life in Poems (Chatto & Windus)
Previous Poetry Award winners include:
Adam
Foulds The Broken Word 2008
Jean Sprackland Tilt 2007
John Haynes Letter to Patience 2006
Christopher Logue Cold
Calls 2005
Michael Symmons Roberts Corpus 2004
Don
Paterson Landing Light 2003
2009 Costa Children's Book Award
The Ask and the Answer (Chaos Walking: Book Two) by Patrick
Ness
Walker Books
About the
book:
Fleeing before a relentless army, Todd has carried a
desperately wounded Viola right into the hands of their worst enemy, Mayor
Prentiss. Immediately separated from Viola and imprisoned, Todd is forced to
learn the ways of the Mayor's new order. But what secrets are hiding just
outside of the town? And where is Viola? Is she even alive? And who are the
mysterious Answer? And then, one day, the bombs begin to
explode...
About the author:
Patrick Ness
was born on Fort Belvoir army base, Virginia, in the United States and grew up
in Hawaii. He studied English Literature at the University of Southern
California and, after graduating, worked as a corporate writer at a cable
company in Los Angeles, writing manuals, advertisements and speeches.
Ness moved to the UK in 1999 and taught Creative Writing at Oxford
University for three years. He has published two books for adults - a novel, The
Crash of Hennington, and a short story collection entitled Topics About Which I
Know Nothing. He is also the author of the Chaos Walking trilogy for children.
Book One, The Knife of Never Letting Go, won the 2008 Guardian Children's
Fiction Prize and the BookTrust Teenage Prize. Ness is a literary critic for the
Guardian and lives in London.
What the judges said:
"From the first word, we were gripped by this dazzlingly-imagined,
morally complex, compulsively-plotted tale. We are convinced that this is a
major achievement in the
making."
Judges:
William Nicholson: Writer
Fiona Phillip: Broadcaster and journalist
Shortlist,
selected from a total of 102 entries:
Siobhan Dowd: Solace of the
Road (David Fickling Books)
Mary Hoffman: Troubadour (Bloomsbury)
Anna
Perera: Guantanamo Boy (Puffin Books)
Previous Children's Book Award winners include:
Michelle
Magorian Just Henry 2008
Ann Kelley The Bower Bird 2007
Linda Newbery Set in Stone 2006
Kate Thompson The New
Policeman 2005
Geraldine McCaughrean Not the End of the World
2004
David Almond The Fire-Eaters 2003
Notes for Editors:
* The
Costa Book Awards, formerly the Whitbread Book Awards, were established in 1971
to encourage, promote and celebrate the best contemporary British writing.
*
The total prize fund for the Costa Book Awards stands at ?55,000.
* The
award winners from the five categories - Novel, First Novel, Biography, Poetry
and Children's Book - each receive ?5,000.
* The overall Costa Book of the
Year is selected from the five category Award winners with the winner receiving
a further ?30,000.
* The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony
hosted in central London on 26th January, 2010.
* To be eligible for the 2009
awards, books must have been first published in the UK or Ireland between 1
November 2008 and 31 October 2009.
* The 2009 Costa Book of the Year was The
Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (Faber and Faber).
* Since being
announced as the Book of the Year, The Secret Scripture has gone on to sell over
300,000 copies and has become the fastest-selling book in the history of Faber
and Faber.
About Costa:
* Costa was founded by Italian brothers
Sergio and Bruno Costa in 1971.
* Costa Coffee was the first UK coffee shop
chain to commit sourcing beans from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms.
*
Costa's in-store baristas are all coached in the art of coffee making at the
company's unique Costa Coffee Academy based at its own roastery in Lambeth,
London.
* The Costa Foundation was set up in 2006 to give something back to
the communities within the countries from which Costa sources its coffee beans.
The Costa Foundation works with an independent charity partner, Charities Trust,
and is operating under the auspices of Charities Trust's registered charity
number 327489.
* Costa is part of the Whitbread family of brands.
* For
more information, please go to http://www.costa.co.uk/
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