Douglas Stuart
has won Book of the Year at the British Book Awards, triumphing with his “truly exceptional” début novel,
Shuggie Bain (Picador). Others winners at the virtual ceremony (held on 13th May) were 17-year-old Dara McAnulty, former monk Jay Shetty, Delia Owens, Caroline Hirons, Robert Galbraith, and M G Leonard and Sam Sedgman.
Stuart’s novel, which also picked up the Fiction: Début award, claimed the overall prize after beating off fierce competition from authors including Maggie O’Farrell, who won the Fiction award for her chart-topping hit Hamnet (Tinder Press), and David Olusoga, who took the Children’s Illustrated & Non-Fiction prize for Black and British: A Short, Essential History (Macmillan Children’s Books).
Thursday’s online ceremony saw TV presenter and début crime novelist Richard Osman named Author of the Year, while Charlie Mackesy, author of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Ebury), was awarded Illustrator of the Year. Osman’s novel The Thursday Murder Club (Viking) was the bestselling novel of 2020.
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