"Brooklyn" favourite for the 2010 Costa Book of the Year

Colm Toibin’s sixth novel Brooklyn, a sparely written account of a young woman's emigration from 1950s Ireland to New York, has been awarded the 2010 Costa novel award and is the favourite to win the overall Costa Book of the Year award. Raphael Selbourne won the First Novel Award for Beauty, the story of a young Bangladeshi woman on the run from her family. Graham Farmelo was awarded the Biography Award for his work on the pioneer of quantum mechanics, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Quantum Genius. Christopher Reid who, having been nominated twice previously, finally claimed the Poetry Award for A Scattering, a tribute to his wife following her death in 2005. Patrick Ness was awarded the Children's Book Award for The Ask and the Answer (Book Two of the Chaos Walking trilogy). The Costa Book Awards recognise the most enjoyable books by writers based in the UK and Ireland in five categories: novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s book. This year's five successful authors now go forward to compete for the 2010 Costa Book of the Year prize, which will be announced on January 26th in London. The winner in each category receives £5,000 (€5,500), while the overall winner receives a further £25,000. The awards were established in 1971 by Whitbread, but coffee-shop chain Costa took over the sponsorship of the prize in 2006.