Asian authors dominate this year’s Costa First Book Award (November 16, 2010).
Nikesh Shukla’s Coconut Unlimited, Kishwar Desai’s Witness of the Night and Aatish Taseer’s The Temple Goers join Simon Thirsk’s Not Quite White in the First Book Award Shortlist 2010.
The Costa Book Awards recognise the most enjoyable books in five categories – First Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry and Children’s Book – published in the last year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.
This year’s Costa Book Awards attracted 540 entries. Judges on this year’s panels (three per category) included authors Adele Parks, Juliet Nicolson and Tim Bowler; poet Ruth Padel; biographer Caroline Moorehead OBE and broadcasters and presenters Lorraine Kelly, Anneka Rice and Anita Rani, as well as literary critics and booksellers.
Winners in the five categories, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on Wednesday 5th January 2011.
The overall winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2010 will receive £30,000 and will be selected and announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in central London on Tuesday 25th January 2011.
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, six times by a collection of poetry and once by a children’s book.
Last year’s winner in the first book award category was Beauty by Raphael Selbourne, told the story of a young, naive Bengali teenager living in Wolverhampton who runs away from home.