Middle England novel about a divided Britain in the wake of the EU referendum wins £5,000 Costa prize
- Judges said Middle England by Jonathan Coe was ‘the perfect novel for now’
- Follows group of characters first seen in author’s 2001 book The Rotters’ Club
- Mary Jean Chan won the poetry award with her debut collection, Fleche
Middle England – a novel about a divided Britain in the wake of the EU referendum has won the £5,000 Costa prize
A novel about a divided Britain in the wake of the EU referendum has won the Costa Novel Award for 2019.
Middle England by Jonathan Coe, described as a ‘story of nostalgia and delusion’, was dubbed the ‘the perfect novel for now’ by the judging panel.
The story follows a group of normal people and their attempts to hold together relationships and careers amid the chaos of Brexit.
Coe’s third novel features the characters from his 2001 novel The Rotters’ Club and 2004’s The Closed Circle. It opens in 2010 and ends in the autumn of 2018.
Lawyer-turned-writer Sara Collins, 47, won the prize for best first novel for her gothic romance, The Confessions Of Frannie Langton.
Miss Collins’ debut novel is about a dark love affair between a Jamaican maid and her French mistress in Georgian London.
The Jamaican-born writer worked in the Cayman Islands as a dispute resolution lawyer for 17 years and was also involved in human rights advocacy.
She said she wanted to ‘dispel the myth that the black presence in England started with Windrush.’
Debut authors scooped two other categories, with Jasbinder Bilan winning the Children’s Book Award with her first novel, Asha And The Spirit Bird, ‘a thrilling adventure set in contemporary India.’
Judges said that Middle England by Jonathan Coe (pictured) was ‘the perfect novel for now’
Mary Jean Chan won the Poetry Award with her debut collection, Fleche, exploring ‘themes of multilingualism, queerness, psychoanalysis and cultural history.’
The Volunteer: The True Story Of The Resistance Hero who Infiltrated Auschwitz, by former war reporter Jack Fairweather, won the biography category.
‘We were deeply moved and impressed by this extraordinary, chilling and masterful work of historical biography.
‘Compulsive and accomplished, it had to be our winner,’ said the judges.
The five winning authors each receive £5,000 and are now in the running for the 2019 Costa Book Of The Year, announced later this month.