We are delighted that THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH by Monique Roffey has been shortlisted for the Breakthrough Author category of the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2021. Also shortlisted are Dara McAnulty with Diary of a Young Naturalist and Wild Child, Elle McNicoll with Show Us Who You Are, and Marcus Rashford with You Are a Champion (written with Carl Anka).
THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH was published to wide acclaim by Peepal Tree Press in the UK in April 2020, with the paperback published by Vintage in June 2021. It was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Folio Prize and won both the Costa Novel Award and the Costa Book of the Year Award 2020. It has also been shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses and longlisted for the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and the RSL Ondaatje Prize. Rights have been sold in the US, Estonia, France, Germany, Holland, Croatia, Serbia, Italy, Hungary, Japan, Poland, Turkey and Russia, with a film deal being concluded.
The Books Are My Bag Readers Awards are the only book awards curated by bookshops and chosen by readers, and are now in their sixth year. The public can cast their vote for the winner here up until 31 October. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on Tuesday 9 November at Foyles on Charing Cross Road hosted by Claudia Winkleman. Previous winners of the Breakthrough Author category include Jean Menzies (Greek Myths), Greta Thunberg (No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference), Sarah J. Harris (The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder), Kae Tempest (The Bricks that Built the Houses) and Joanna Cannon (The Trouble with Goats and Sheep).
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.
Praise for THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH
‘Monique Roffey is a unique talent and most daring and versatile of writers.’ — Bernardine Evaristo
‘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 a daring, mesmerising novel that continually unseats expectation …With her fierce and shapeshifting mermaid, Roffey has created a modern myth about belonging and the bonds humans form with each other and with their land, single-handedly bringing magic realism up to date.’ — Maggie O’Farrell
‘A reading experience as captivating as a tropical storm. Full-throated and mesmerizing’ — C. Pam Zhang
‘Monique Roffey managed to say so much about society’s treatment of difference, enslavement, exploitation of the natural world, sexual politics, but without ever sermonising or compromising the storytelling’ — Clare Chambers
Photo: Marcus Bastel
About Monique Roffey
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. The Mermaid of Black Conch won the Costa Prize as well as receiving many other prize nominations.
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