Costa Book Award for Best First Novel

 

2011 selection

Tiny Sunbirds, Far Away

Costa Book Award for Best First Novel 2011

by Christie Watson

Winner of the 2011 Costa First Novel Award

When their mother catches their father with another woman, twelve year-old Blessing and her fourteen-year-old brother, Ezikiel, are forced to leave their comfortable...


2007 selection

What Was Lost

Costa Book Award for Best First Novel 2007

by Catherine O'Flynn

A tender and sharply observant debut novel about a missing young girl—winner of the Costa First Novel Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and The Guardian First Book Award

In the 1980s,...


2005 selection

The Harmony Silk Factory

Costa Book Award for Best First Novel 2005

by Tash Aw

Joseph Conrad, W. Somerset Maugham, and Anthony Burgess have shaped our perceptions of Malaysia. In Tash Aw, we now have an authentic Malaysian voice that remaps this literary landscape.

The Harmony Silk...


2002 selection

The Song of Names

Costa Book Award for Best First Novel 2002

by Norman Lebrecht

Martin Simmonds’ father tells him, “Never trust a musician when he speaks about love.” The advice comes too late. Martin already loves Dovidl Rapoport, an eerily gifted Polish violin prodigy whose parents...


2000 selection

White Teeth

Commonwealth Best First Book Prize 2001, James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction 2000, Costa Book Award for Best First Novel 2000

by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice...