The Costa Book Awards winners 2020
Congratulations to the winners of the 2020 Costa Book Awards.
These awards honour some of the most outstanding books of the year written by authors based in the UK and Ireland, across five different categories. They are intended to reward the most enjoyable book in each category, with the winner of the overall £30,000 book of the year prize to be announced on 26 January.
First novel
The winner is Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud.
Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household. Happy in their differences, they build a home together. Home: the place keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world – until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart.
Novel
The winner is The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story by Monique Roffey.
April 1976: St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch. David, a fisherman, sings to himself in his pirogue, waiting for a catch – and attracts a sea-dweller he doesn’t expect. Aycayia, a centuries old mermaid, is drawn to his singing. But her curiosity is her undoing when she is caught by American tourists… David rescues her and hides her away, where she slowly, painfully turns into a woman.
Biography
The winner is The Louder I Will Sing by Lee Lawrence.
On 28th September 1985, Lee Lawrence’s mother Cherry Groce was wrongly shot by police during a raid on her home. The bullet shattered her spine and both their lives changed forever. The Louder I Will Sing is a memoir about growing up in modern Britain as a young Black man. It’s a story both of people and politics, but also the positive power that hope, faith and love can bring in response.
Poetry
The winner is The Historians by Eavan Boland.
Throughout her nearly sixty-year career, acclaimed poet Eavan Boland came to be known for her exquisite ability to weave myth, history and the life of an ordinary woman into mesmerising poetry. Her final volume, The Historians, is the culmination of her signature themes, exploring the ways in which the hidden, sometimes all-but-erased stories of women’s lives can powerfully revise our sense of the past.
Children’s books
The winner is Voyage of the Sparrowhawk by Natasha Farrant.
Voyage of the Sparrowhawk is an epic journey of police chases, storms at sea and unexpected puppies. Set in the aftermath of World War 1 it follows two orphans as they take their narrowboat across the Channel in search of lost loved ones and a place to call home.
