Vintage score four nominations for the Costa Book Awards

Vintage have had a fantastic four nominations for this year's Costa Book Awards, which recognise the most enjoyable books of the year written by writers based in the UK and Ireland.

Harvill Secker author Karl Geary is nominated in the First Novel Award category for Montpelier Parade, a debut which unfolds in the sea-bright Dublin of early spring, about the things that remain unspoken between lovers. It is Karl's first novel, after stints as a scriptwriter and actor. The judges praised Montpelier Parade as "A beautifully-written story about the pain and wonder of love found in unexpected places."

The Biography Award sees Xiaolu Guo's Once Upon a Time in the East: A Story of Growing Up and Caroline Moorehead's A Bold and Dangerous Family: The Rosselllis and the Fight Against Mussolini both nominated.

Once Upon a Time in the East (Chatto & Windus) follows Xiaolu's own story from a run-down shack to a film school in a rapidly-changing Beijing, navigating Western boyfriends, underground art and censorship, before moving to Britain on a scholarship. The nomination is Xialou's latest, having previously received nominations for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction and the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

Caroline Moorehead receives her second Costa Biography Award nomination for A Bold and Dangerous Family (also Chatto & Windus), where she revisits the horros of Mussolini's Italy through the eyes of a bold and uncompromising family from Florence: Amelia, Carlo and Nello Rosselli. Through spending time with the surviving members of the family and by researching letters and diaries never previously translated into English, Caroline reveals – in all its intimacy – a family driven by loyalty, duty and courage, yet susceptible to all the self-doubt and fear that humans are prey to.

In the Poetry Award, Kayo Chingonyi caps off Vintage and Chatto's stellar year with Kumukanda, his debut collection, which is a a powerful exploration of race, identity and masculinity, celebrating what it means to be British and not British, all at once. Celebrating its nomination, the judges called Kumukanda "energetic, skilled, tender and bold - this is an outstanding collection by a major new talent."

The nomations follow on from a successful year for Vintage at the 2016 awards, with three nominations and two category wins, as Keggie Carew's Dadland won the Biography Award and Alice Oswald's Falling Awake won the Poetry Award.

The five category winners will be announced on Tuesday 2 January, with the overall winner and recipient of the £30,000 prize, being announced at the Costa Book Awards ceremony in London on 30 January. We wish the best of luck to all of our writers nominated.

Finally, we were delighted to see a nomination in the Poetry Award for the late Helen Dunmore, for her collection Inside the Wave, published by Bloodaxe Books. Helen's novels were published by Penguin Random House for over twenty years, initially by Penguin and latterly by Hutchinson, an imprint of Cornerstone. Her final novel, Birdcage Walk was published in March 2017.

Press Enquiries

For more information on this story please get in touch via our media contacts.