THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH BY MONIQUE ROFFEY SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD

THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH by Monique Roffey has been shortlisted for the 2020 Costa Novel Award, one of the UK’s most prestigious awards. Eric Karl Anderson, one of the judges of the Costa First Novel Award category, commented in a blog post that he is ‘especially thrilled to see Monique Roffey's novel THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH shortlisted for the Novel Award’ and that it is one of his favourite books of the year. Also shortlisted for the Novel Award are Susanna Clarke, Tim Finch and Denise Mina.

THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH was published to wide acclaim by Peepal Tree Press in the UK and by W F Howes in audio. Booker Prize-winning author Bernardine Evaristo has also included the novel in a round-up of her five favourite books of 2020. Praising Monique Roffey as ‘the most adventurous of writers’, Evaristo adds that THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH is ‘packed with layers of meaning around womanhood, alienation, masculinity, toxic attitudes towards women, and inter-female rivalry, as well as love, compassion and the search for home.’  THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH 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 category winners of the 2020 Costa Book Awards will be announced on Monday 4th January 2021, and the Costa Book of the Year winner, 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.

Praise for THE MERMAID OF BLACK CONCH

‘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 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 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

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.

Read an interview with Monique Roffey here

Visit Monique’s website

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Kirsty Bashforth’s CULTURE SHIFT shortlisted for a Business Book Award

Kirsty Bashforth’s CULTURE SHIFT has been shortlisted for a Business Book Award, in the category of Sustainable Change. The Business Book Awards aim to highlight leadership, change and sustainability in business, promoting authors who share their industry knowledge, experience and expertise. CULTURE SHIFT, which was described by Iain Conn (CEO of Centrica) as “straight talking, realistic and refreshingly honest”, was published by Bloomsbury in 2019. An audio edition narrated by the author has also been published by WF Howes.

In CULTURE SHIFT, Bashforth uses her extensive experience to outline exactly what it takes to oversee sustainable culture change in an organization, drawing on case studies such as IBM, Uber, VW and John Lewis.

Her book explores how to communicate cultural expectations to a number of stakeholders; implement new, lasting habits in the workforce; effectively measure and track organizational culture; as well as deal with push-back from senior leadership when, as time passes, the planned culture shift risks falling lower on their agenda.

Founded on behavioural economics, CULTURE SHIFT recognises that people do not always make average assumptions or follow rational logic. Changing a culture, therefore, is not about telling people what to do and expecting them to fall neatly in line - it's about identifying where they are now and how they make decisions, in order to help them form new habits to create a sustainable culture shift, from the very top of the organization's workforce to the bottom.


Praise for CULTURE SHIFT:

‘The mix of personal experience and straight-talking advice creates a vital handbook for anyone taking on the task of managing culture.’ — Sunny Varkey, Founder of GEMS Education and Varkey Foundation

‘I taught culture at a business school for years, and always felt that I was about to get found out, because all the models I came across sounded plausible but simply didn't work. I wish I'd had this book, and I wish I'd written it. Bravo - it should be issued to all new leaders along with their security pass on day one.’ — Eve Poole, author of LEADERSMITHING

‘One person's logic is not another's - a key premise of this accessible book that unpicks why you can't simply announce the culture you want, and expect to create it. It takes time, effort, balance and a healthy dose of pig-headedness. Wonderful, original stuff.’ — Charlie Hodgson, Team and Leadership Coach


Kirsty Bashforth is CEO of QuayFive Ltd, advising CEOs on change, organizational culture and leadership, with clients across energy, utilities, health and financial services sectors both in the FTSE 100 and globally. Previously, she was Group Head of Organizational Effectiveness with BP, designing and delivering the shift in the company's organizational culture for five years from 2010, as part of the company's response and recovery following the Deepwater Horizon incident.

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RIGHTS TO KAREN POWELL'S THE RIVER WITHIN SOLD TO EUROPA EDITIONS AT AUCTION

Europa Editions UK has secured Karen Powell's "extraordinary" novel at auction.

Director Christopher Potter has acquired rights for two titles from Samuel Hodder at Blake Friedmann following a two-publisher auction. As well as UK and Commonwealth, Potter bought rights for United States and Italy “such was the strength of our feelings and commitment”. Europa will publish the first novel, THE RIVER WITHIN, in 2020.

“I was bowled over by the poetic intensity of this extraordinary novel,” Potter said. THE RIVER WITHIN is as evocative of place and landscape as any novel I can think of. I believe THE RIVER WITHIN will immediately find its place as a classic in a tradition that includes the novels of Thomas Hardy and Graham Swift.”

Powell said: “I am delighted to be working with an editor of Christopher’s calibre and with Europa Editions – they’re passionate champions of European literary fiction and the quality of their list is ridiculously good.”

For both titles, audio rights for the UK and British Commonwealth (excluding Canada) were sold to WF Howes.

THE RIVER WITHIN is a piercing and evocative novel set in 1950s Yorkshire. On a summer’s day in the village of Starome, the body of young Danny Masters emerges from the river. It’s found by Danny’s three teenage friends: Alexander, the volatile heir to Richmond Hall, the country estate that neighbours Starome, and sister and brother, Lennie and Tom, whose father is secretary to the Richmond family. The friends’ responses to Danny’s death are strange. Why does Alexander seem oddly stimulated, excited even, and why is Lennie so keen for everyone to move on? How did Danny die? Did he fall in, or jump? Or worse?  In an interweaving narrative that moves across the months before and after Danny’s death, the secrets of the village begin to surface.

Powell left school at 16, but returned to education as a mature student to study English Literature at Cambridge University. She lives in Yorkshire, and an early draft of THE RIVER WITHIN was awarded a Northern Writers’ TLC ‘New Fiction Reads’ prize, which seeks to support work-in-progress by new, emerging and established writers across the North of England. She subsequently attended the ‘New Writing North’ Summer Talent Salon in 2018, where she secured agent representation from Hodder.