We are delighted that THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH by Monique Roffey has won the 2020 Costa Novel Award. Announcing the Category Winners on BBC Front Row, Chair of Judges Suzannah Lipscomb called the novel ‘an unforgettable story of a legend that comes to life’, and praised its ‘beautiful passages and prose’, as well as the ‘fantastically compelling plot’. The other Category Winners are Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud (First Novel), The Louder I Will Sing by Lee Lawrence (Biography), The Historians by Eavan Boland (Poetry) and Voyage of the Sparrowhawk by Natasha Farrant (Children’s).
Click the links to watch a short video of Monique Roffey introducing her novel and you can also listen to Front Row on BBC Radio 4, featuring Suzannah Lipscomb discussing the Costa Novel Award (from 8:45) and an interview with Monique Roffey (from 9:47).
THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH was published to wide acclaim by Peepal Tree Press in the UK and by W F Howes in audio. It was also shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize earlier this year, an award established to celebrate fiction which ‘extends the possibilities of the novel form’.
A vivid, moving story of love and trust, family and friendship in a Caribbean island community, THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH is a world brought to unforgettable life by a master storyteller. A fisherman sings to himself in his boat, but attracts an unexpected sea-dweller — Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed to live as a mermaid, swimming the ocean for centuries. Theirs becomes a calm, unspoken bond. But when she hears David’s engine again one day and follows the vessel, she finds herself in a fierce battle for her life. Caught by American sports fishermen, she is strung up on the dock as a trophy, but David rescues her, and gently wins her trust as she starts to transform, painfully, back into a woman. But jealous eyes are watching them…
Interwoven with David and Aycayia’s love story is that of Miss Arcadia Rain, a white landowner bringing up her deaf son on a dwindling estate. As her young son connects with fellow outsider Aycayia, an old lover of Arcadia’s returns to the island and she too begins to feel her way into love and trust again.
See more about THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH on the Peepal Tree Press site.
The winner of the Costa Book of the Year, chosen from one the Category Winners, will be announced on Tuesday 26th January 2021 and awarded a prize of £30,000. The Costa Book Awards was established in 1971 and is awarded to ‘the most enjoyable books of the year by writers resident in the UK and Ireland.’ Past winners of the Novel Award include Jonathan Coe, Sally Rooney, Jon McGregor, Sebastian Barry, Kate Atkinson and Ali Smith. Past winners of the Costa Book of the Year include The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather, The Cut Out Girl by Bart van Es, Inside the Wave by Helen Dunmore, Days Without End by Sebastian Barry and The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge.
Praise for THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH
‘Monique Roffey is a unique talent and most daring and versatile of writers.’ — Bernardine Evaristo
‘THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH arrives bearing tragedy and beauty. Monique Roffey has created a new myth for an age of ruined oceans. She continues to be one of our most exciting new Caribbean voices.’ — A.L. Kennedy
‘Monique Roffey is a writer of verve, vibrancy and compassion, and her work is always a joy to read.’ — Sarah Hall
THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH is wonderfully written, with both soul and intense drama – it glistens almost, like the mermaid! I love its all-round charisma and also its great compassion for both humanity and the natural world.’ — Diana Evans
‘THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH is like a lost myth, found, and made fresh again for our times.’ — Tessa McWatt, author of Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging
About Monique Roffey
Credit: Marcus Bastel
Monique Roffey is an award-winning novelist. House of Ashes (Scribner UK) was shortlisted for the Costa and the BOCAS Prize. Archipelago, winner of the OCM BOCAS prize for Caribbean Literature, was published by Scribner in the UK, Viking in the US, and translated into 5 languages. Her second novel The White Woman on the Green Bicycle was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and the Encore Prize, among other accolades, and film/TV rights have been optioned.
Read an interview with Monique Roffey here
Visit Monique’s website
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