Trinidad authors Monique Roffey and Ingrid Persaud won Costa Book Awards for their novels The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story and Love After Love, respectively. Adam Sherwin (inews) reports:
Trinidad celebrated a triumph at the Costa Book Awards with authors born on the Caribbean island winning in the Novel categories. Writer, artist and academic Ingrid Persaud won the Costa First Novel Award for Love After Love.
‘Dark love story’
The judges said the story of Trinidadian Betty Ramdin, written in Trinidadian prose, was “teeming with life” and “full of unforgettable characters.”
Monique Roffey won the Novel Award for her seventh book, The Mermaid of Black Conch: A Love Story. The dark love story, between a fisherman and a mermaid torn from the sea, is based on a legend shared by indigenous Caribbean people. The judges called the novel “a story of rare imagination” and “a glorious myth.”
Based in the UK, Persaud and Roffey explore themes of colonialism in their work. [. . .]
Roffey is also a co-founder of Writers Rebel, a working group of writers inside Extinction Rebellion. In her award-winning story, Aycayia, a beautiful young woman living on the Caribbean island of Black Conch, is cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid. [. . .]
For full article, see https://inews.co.uk/culture/books/costa-book-awards-trinidad-authors-monique-roffey-ingrid-persaud-win-816558
