British Book Awards 2024
Murdle, Impossible (mythical) Creatures and Katherine Rundell
The British Book Awards for (in theory, but see below) UK authors, illustrators and their books published last year—presented 13 May at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House Hotel, London
The British Book Awards, also known as the Nibbies after their nib-shaped trophies, have been going since 1990 (with a gap in 2015-16) and have been run by The Bookseller, a publishing magazine, since 2017. There are currently twelve categories, with separate judging teams for each. One of them is voted overall Book of the Year, as it should be. (Quick aside: The Western Spur and Romantic Novelists’ Association awards used to have an overall book of the year, but they scrapped this and now have a series of categories, none of which is obviously the blue ribbon prize. So there’s no way of showcasing one western or romance novel as the best or to attract someone not used to the genre. I keep meaning to write to them about this.)
I’ve struggled to tie down the eligibility. The website says they are a celebration of the UK and Ireland’s best-loved books and authors, and Wikipedia that they are for UK writers and their works. However, the author of the Book of the Year is American and US-based, and some category winners and previous winners are from afar. My guess is that eligibility is for books published in the UK last year, with individual awards restricted to British or Irish authors and illustrators.
The Bookseller also present the Book Trade Awards at the same time, which are trade awards for editing, marketing, publishing and the like.
Selected Results
Book of the Year: Murdle by G. T. Karber, also winner of the Non-Fiction: Lifestyle & Illustrated category. This is a book of 100 murder mystery–themed logic puzzles, where the reader has to identify the murderer, the weapon and the murder location based on clues in the story. It was borne out of the author’s website murdle.com, where a daily mystery is published—the reader clicks on cards to turn them over and learn more before attempting to deduce the answer to the daily puzzle. Check out the site to see today’s example. The book contains a story arc that is unveiled as the puzzles are solved, including humour and “even a little romance”—see an excellent interview with the author here. The author (Greg is his first name) is a Los Angeles-based American computer programmer and puzzle fan. Murdle was published in Jun 2023 and two more books have rapidly followed, each with 100 more puzzles and a continuation of the storyline: Murdle: More Killer Puzzles and Murdle: Even More Killer Puzzles.
Fiction: Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang, a 28-year-old Chinese-born American fantasy novelist, who has won the fiction prize for the second year in a row after last year’s Babel, which also won last year’s Nebula sci-fi award for best novel. The book, her fifth, is about “a white author who steals an unpublished manuscript, written by a more successful Asian American novelist who died in a freak accident, and publishes it as her own”.
Crime and Thriller: None of This is True by Lisa Jewell, a bestselling English author with 22 books and counting. She started with romance and family drama and has moved on to psychological thrillers, of which None of This is True is an example—I’m sure it’s great.
Non-Fiction: Narrative: Politics on the Edge, a political memoir by Rory Stewart, the former Conservative MP, International Development minister and leadership candidate.
Children’s Fiction: Impossible Creatures, the first book in a fantasy trilogy, by Katherine Rundell, also the Author of the Year winner. This is about a boy who visits a cluster of islands where creatures of myth live and a girl he meets there, complete with flying coat. They embark on a quest to find out why the creatures are perishing in a bid to save both the islands and the world beyond. How could you resist? And surely griffins are real!
Author of the Year: Katherine Rundell, a 36-year-old English author and academic (she's a fellow in English Literature at All Souls College, Oxford). She mostly writes children's fiction, although she also wrote Why You Should Read Children’s Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise and Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne, a biography of John Dunne, ten years in the making and borne of Katherine's fascination with Dunne, including making him the subject of her PhD—this won last year’s Baille Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Book Trade Awards: among the 17 awards for categories such as Editor of the Year, Literary Agent of the Year and Marketing Strategy of the Year, Book-ish in Crickhowell, Wales won Independent Bookshop of the Year and The Children's Bookshop in Muswell Hill, London won Book Retailer of the Year. Drop in if you’re in either area.
See Wikipedia, British Book Awards for historic winners back to the award’s inception in 1990 and for shortlisted nominees for the last few years. You’ll notice the categories have chopped and changed over the years.
Up next are the Romantic Novelists’ Association Awards on 20 May at the Leonardo Royal Hotel, St Paul’s, London. I know, they’ve already happened! The link gives the winners and I’ll do my roving report soon. The Ivor Novello Awards for songwriting have also flown past—23 May at the Grosvenor House Hotel (same venue as the British Book Awards)—as has the Cannes film festival (from 14 to 25 May in, er, Cannes). May is a busy month for awards.