2007 Costa Book Awards

FORMER POSTWOMAN Catherine O’Flynn has won the 2007 Costa First Novel Award for her novel, What Was Lost (2007). She was longlisted for the Booker Prize and the Orange Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. The judges believe it to be a formidable novel blending humour and pathos in a cleverly constructed and absorbing mystery.

Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore won for his exhaustively researched biography of Joseph Stalin, Young Stalin (2008), evoking the early life of the Russian dictator. A.L. Kennedy won for best novel with her book, Day (2008), and is hotly tipped to win the 2007 Costa Book of the Year Award later this month.

Ann Kelley won for the Children’s Book Award for her moving account of a 12-year-old living in St. Ives awaiting news of a heart-transplant surgery, The Bower Bird (2008) while Jean Sprackland won for the poetry category for her third collection of poetry, Tilt (2008).

The 2007 Costa Book of the Year will announced on January 22, 2008