1997 Whitbread Awards

The Whitbread Awards (since 2006 called the Costa Book Awards) are among the United Kingdom's most prestigious literary awards. They were launched in 1971, are given both for high literary merit but also for works that are enjoyable reading and whose aim is to convey the enjoyment of reading to the widest possible audience. This page gives details of the awards given in the year 1997.

Awards

Book of the Year

• Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid

Children's Book

• Andrew Norriss, Aquila

Shortlist

• Alan Temperley, Harry and the Wrinklies
• Sharon Creech, Chasing Redbird
• Melvin Burgess, Junk

First Novel

• Pauline Melville, The Ventriloquist's Tale

Shortlist

• Anne Haverty, One Day as a Tiger
• Mick Jackson, The Underground Man
• Ardashir Vakil, Beach Boy
• Eclipse of the Sun, Phil Whitaker

Novel

• Jim Crace, Quarantine

Shortlist

• John Banville, The Untouchable
• Bernard MacLaverty, Grace Notes
• Patrick McGrath, Asylum
• Ian McEwan, Enduring Love
• Geoff Nicholson, Bleeding London

Biography

• Graham Robb, Victor Hugo

Shortlist

• Jessica Douglas-Home, Violet: The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse
• Kate Summerscale, Queen of Whale Cay
• Stella Tillyard, Citizen Lord
• Jenny Uglow, Hogarth, A Life and a World

Poetry

• Ted Hughes, Tales from Ovid

Shortlist

• Simon Armitage, CloudCuckooLand
• Selima Hill, Sugar-Paper blue Violet
• Christopher Reid, Expanded Universes
• Peter Redgrove, Assembling a Ghost

References

• Previous winners