COSTA BOOK AWARDS 2017
SHORTLISTS ANNOUNCED
· 20 authors announced today across five categories for the only major UK book prize open solely to authors resident in the UK and Ireland
· 2006 Costa Book of the Year winner Stef Penney shortlisted in the Novel Award category together with Jon McGregor, Kamila Shamsie and actor and novelist Sarah Winman
· The First Novel Award category includes books by former actor and screenwriter Karl Geary, editor and broadcaster Xan Brooks, Rebecca F. John and Gail Honeyman, whose shortlisted novel is to be adapted for the big screen by Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine
· The Poetry Award shortlist features two debut collections by Kayo Chingonyi and wild food forager Richard Osmond, and nominations for Sinéad Morrissey and (posthumously) Helen Dunmore
· Memoirs from heart surgeon Professor Stephen Westaby, Chinese-British writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo and novelist and historian Rebecca Stott - about life inside a Christian fundamentalist separatist cult - feature in the Biography Award alongside Caroline Moorehead's biography of Italian anti-fascist heroes, the Rosselli family
· The all-female Children's Book Award shortlist includes former comedy producer Lissa Evans, Sarah Crossan, Katherine Rundell and award-winning poet and author, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, also a judge for the 2017 Costa Poetry Award
19.30pm, Tuesday 21st November 2017: Costa today announces the shortlists for the 2017 Costa Book Awards.
The Costa Book Awards is the only major UK book prize that is open solely to authors resident in the UK and Ireland and also, uniquely, recognises the most enjoyable books across five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book - published in the last year.
Originally established in 1971 by Whitbread Plc, Costa announced its takeover of the sponsorship of one of the UK's most prestigious book prizes in 2006. 2017 marks the 46th year of the Book Awards.
This year’s Costa Book Awards attracted 620 entries. Judges on this year’s panels (three per category) included BBC presenter and journalist Sophie Raworth, authors Freya North, Piers Torday, Lucy Atkins, Simon Garfield and Kiran Millwood Hargrave; poet Moniza Alvi; and book blogger and vlogger, Simon Savidge.
Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on Tuesday 2nd January 2018. The overall winner of the 2017 Costa Book of the Year will receive £30,000 and will be selected and announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in central London on Tuesday 30th January 2018.
“These shortlists are a showcase of everything the Costa Book Awards celebrate: terrific books with broad appeal that will be enjoyed by readers of all tastes,” said Dominic Paul, Managing Director of Costa. “The category judges have done a fantastic job in selecting these 20 brilliant, exciting books. My thanks to them, and many congratulations to all of this year’s shortlisted authors.”
The winner of the Costa Short Story Award, voted for by the public, will also be announced at the ceremony. The shortlisted three stories for the Costa Short Story Award, now in its sixth year, will be revealed on the Costa Book Awards website, www.costabookawards.com, later this month.
Since the introduction of the Book of the Year award in 1985, it has been won twelve times by a novel, five times by a first novel, six times by a biography, seven times by a collection of poetry and twice by a children’s book. The 2016 Costa Book of the Year was Days Without End by Sebastian Barry.
To be eligible for the 2017 Costa Book Awards, books must have been first published in the
UK or Ireland between 1 November 2016 and 31 October 2017 and their authors resident in
the UK for the previous three years.
Full details of the shortlists follow.
For additional information please visit www.costabookawards.com.
For further press information, to request an interview with an author, or for book jacket or author images, please contact:
Amanda Johnson
Costa Book Awards Press and Publicity
Telephone: 07715 922 180
Email:
Twitter: @CostaBookAwards
COSTA BOOK AWARDS 2017 SHORTLISTS
2017 Costa Novel Award shortlist
Jon McGregor / Reservoir 13 / 4th EstateStef Penney / Under a Pole Star / Quercus
Kamila Shamsie / Home Fire / Bloomsbury Circus
Sarah Winman / Tin Man / Tinder Press
2017 Costa First Novel Award shortlist
Xan Brooks / The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times/ Salt
Karl Geary / Montpelier Parade / Harvill Secker
Gail Honeyman / Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine / HarperCollins
Rebecca F. John / The Haunting of Henry Twist / Serpent’s Tail
2017 Costa Biography Award shortlist
Xiaolu Guo / Once Upon a Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up/ Chatto & Windus
Caroline Moorehead / A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rossellis and the Fight Against Mussolini
/ Chatto & Windus
Rebecca Stott / In The Days of Rain / 4th Estate
Professor Stephen Westaby / Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon's Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table / HarperCollins
2017 Costa Poetry Award shortlist
Kayo Chingonyi / Kumukanda / Chatto & WindusHelen Dunmore / Inside the Wave / Bloodaxe Books
Sinéad Morrissey / On Balance / Carcanet
Richard Osmond / Useful Verses / Picador
2017 Costa Children’s Book Award shortlist
Sarah Crossan / Moonrise / Bloomsbury Children’s BooksLissa Evans / Wed Wabbit / David Fickling Books
Kiran Millwood Hargrave / The Island at the End of Everything / Chicken House
Katherine Rundell / The Explorer / Bloomsbury Children’s Books
Shortlist for the 2017 Costa Novel Award
(170 entries)
Judges
Lucy Atkins Author and Critic
Freya North Author
Wayne Winstone Owner, Winstone’s Bookshops
Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor (4th Estate)
Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home. Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed. The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must. As the seasons unfold, there are those who leave the village and those who are pulled back; those who come together or break apart. There are births and deaths; secrets kept and exposed; livelihoods made and lost; small kindnesses and unanticipated betrayals.
Jon McGregor is the author of four novels and a story collection. He is the winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literature Prize, Betty Trask Prize and Somerset Maugham Award, and has twice been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nottingham, where he edits The Letters Page, a literary journal in letters. He was born in Bermuda in 1976, grew up in Norfolk and now lives in Nottingham.
Judges: ‘An extraordinary novel – poetic, haunting and hypnotic.’
Under a Pole Star by Stef Penney (Quercus)
Flora Mackie was twelve when she first crossed the Arctic Circle on her father's whaling ship. Now she’s returning to the frozen seas as the head of her own exploration expedition. Jakob de Beyn was raised in Manhattan, but his yearning for new horizons leads him to the Arctic as part of a rival expedition. When he and Flora meet, all thoughts of science and exploration give way before a sudden, all-consuming love. The affair survives the growing tensions between the two groups but then, after one more glorious summer on the Greenland coast, Jakob joins his leader on an extended trip into the interior - with devastating results.
Stef Penney grew up in Edinburgh and now lives in London. She has degrees in Philosophy and Theology and Film and TV, was selected for the Carlton Television New Writers Scheme and has since written and directed two short films. Her first novel, The Tenderness of Wolves, was named 2006 Costa Book of the Year.
Judges: ‘A novel of huge scope with a tremendous sense of period and place.’
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury Circus)
Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she is finally studying in America. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London – or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. The son of a powerful British Muslim politician, Eamonn has his own birthright to live up to – or defy. Two families’ fates are devastatingly entwined in this searing novel that asks: what sacrifices will we make in the name of love?
Kamila Shamsie is the author of six novels including Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) and, most recently, A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.
Judges: ‘A brave and important book that explores themes that feel both urgent and timeless.’
Tin Man by Sarah Winman (Tinder Press)
It begins with a painting won in a raffle: fifteen sunflowers, hung on the wall by a woman who believes that men and boys are capable of beautiful things. And there are two boys, Ellis and Michael, who are inseparable. And the boys become men, and then Annie walks into their lives - and it changes nothing and everything.
Sarah Winman grew up in Essex and now lives in London. She attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art and was an actor for 30 years in theatre, TV and film. She has written three novels including When God Was a Rabbit.
Judges: ‘A tender and deeply moving exploration of love and grief written with deceptive simplicity.’
Shortlist for the 2017 Costa First Novel Award
(99 entries)
Judges
Sandeep Mahal Director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature and Literary Consultant at SLAM Films
Sophie Raworth BBC Presenter and Journalist
Simon Savidge Book Blogger and Vlogger, Savidge Reads
The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times by Xan Brooks (Salt)
Summer 1923. Orphaned Lucy Marsh climbs into the back of an old army truck and is whisked away to meet 'the funny men’ in the woods. Named after characters from The Wizard of Oz – the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, Toto and the Lion – these men are, in fact, horribly damaged war heroes. But when these mysterious encounters in the woods come to an abrupt end, Lucy seizes upon the chance to leave her grandparents' failing North London pub behind for stately Grantwood House. But the handsome prince she meets there might just be ugly inside, and the man with fire at his fingertips will prove most dangerous of all. But if Lucy can avoid all the hazards on the path, she may just survive into a bright new tomorrow.
Xan Brooks is an award-winning writer and broadcaster, specialising in film. He was part of the founding editorial team of the Big Issue magazine and later worked as an associate editor at the Guardian. He has extensive broadcast experience with BBC and Channel 4. The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times was sparked by the true story of Brooks’ great-aunt who was sent on nightmarish errands into Epping Forest during the interwar period. Xan lives in Bristol.
Judges: ‘A perfectly-paced, unsettling yet strangely uplifting tale about fractured lives and broken people.’
Montpelier Parade by Karl Geary (Harvill Secker)
The house is on Montpelier Parade - just across town, but it might as well be a different world. Working there on the garden with his father one Saturday, Sonny is full of curiosity. Then the back door eases open and she comes down the path towards him. Vera. Chance meetings become shy arrangements, and soon Sonny is in love for the first time. Casting off his lonely life of dreams and quiet violence for this intoxicating encounter, he longs to know Vera, even to save her. But what is it that Vera isn’t telling him?
Karl Geary was born in Dublin and moved to New York at age 16 where he co-founded music venue Sin-e and later the Scratcher in New York’s East Village. He's worked as a scriptwriter and an actor (including in Ken Loach's Jimmy's Hall), and has adapted and directed Dorothy Parker's "You Were Perfectly Fine" for the screen. He lives in Glasgow.
Judges: ‘A beautifully-written story about the pain and wonder of love found in unexpected places.’
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman (HarperCollins)
Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything. One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn to navigate the world that everyone else seems to take for granted – while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she’s avoided all her life. Change can be good. Change can be bad. But surely anything is better than...fine?