The Costa Book Awards was pretty much unheard of, here – until 2005, when Malaysian-born Tash Aw won the award for Best First Novel for his book, The Harmony Silk Factory. His second book, The Invisible Map, was released last year.
The Costa Book Awards was previously known as the The Whitbread Literary Awards. Costa, a growing coffee shop chain in UK took over the ownership of the Book Awards in 2006. The Costa Book Awards has 5 categories and the winner of each category will win £ 5,000. The 2009 winners were announced on 5th January 2010. They are, as follows:
- Costa Novel Award: Brooklyn by Colm Tóibin
- Back in the early 1950s, Eilis Lacey emigrated to Brooklyn, New York, leaving behind her Irish family. Though far from home, Eilis takes tentative steps towards new friendships, and perhaps a little more too. Then, she receives news which sends her back to Ireland. There, she is confronted by a dilemma – to choose between duty and one great love.
- First Novel Award: Beauty by Raphael Selbourne.
- Beauty is a 20 year-old Bangladeshi who shocked her family by fleeing an abusive arranged marriage. Forced to look for a job, her encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants, and cityh street strangers and the restrictions (and comfort) of her language and culture, place her at the mercy of unlikely helpers such as Mark, a friendly ex-offender and Peter, a middle-class underachiever. Such ‘white’ influences conflict with pressure of her family’s religious line, but they enable Beauty to understand better how free-will and parental care can affect her personal destiny.
- Biography Award: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius by Graham Farmelo.
- Paul Dirac was one of the leading pioneers of a science revolution: the quantum mechanics. He was also pathologically reticent, literal-minded and unable to communicate or empathize. Yet, based on a previously undiscovered archive of family papers and Dirac’s massive achievements, Graham Farmelo draws a compassionate portrait of the life and work of this Novel Prize winner. Farmelo shows a man who, while hopelessly socially inept, could manage to love and sustain close friendship.
- Poetry Award: A Scattering by Christopher Reid
- This collection of four poetic sequences were written in memory and in tribute to Reid’s wife following her death in October 2005.
- Children’s Book Award: Chaos Walking #2: The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness
- The trilogy began with The Knife of Never Letting Go about Todd Hewitt who can hear everything other people thinks and vice versa. He finds out that his town has been keeping secrets that will force him to run. In the second book, Todd and wounded Viola runs right into the hands of Mayor Prentiss. Separated and imprisoned, Todd is forced to learn the ways of the Mayor’s new order. Questions remains: What secrets are being hidden? Where is Viola? Who are the Answer? … This is a tense, shocking and deeply moving novel of resistance under the most extreme pressure.
This year’s overall winner of the Costa Book Awards will be announced on 26th January 2010 and the winner stands to walk away with an additional £ 25,000.
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