Nero Gold Prize 2023 voor Paul Murray

Juryvoorzitter Bernardine Evaristo over de winnaar van de prijs die in vorm de opvolger is van de Costa Book Awards:

‘This is a wonderfully ambitious and entrancing novel about a family imploding against a background of Ireland’s economic and social crisis of the late noughties. Suspenseful and linguistically astonishing, The Bee Sting is written with great wit and humanity, with a cast of complex characters who are held back by their past, mired in the present and longing for a different future. Paul Murray is a supremely gifted storyteller as we learn of unspoken secrets and desires in difficult and sometimes dangerous situations, in a rich, multi-layered novel that is both epic and intimate in scale. This is fiction of the finest calibre and we all unanimously agreed that The Bee Sting should win the Nero Gold Prize 2023 Book of the Year.’

The Bee Sting werd eerder genomineerd voor de Booker Prize. De vertaling van Dirk-Jan Arensman verschijnt dit najaar bij Meridiaan.

De Nero Book Awards worden toegekend in de genres Children’s Fiction, Debut Fiction, Fiction en Non-Fiction. The Bee Sting door Paul Murray (Fiction) werd verkozen boven Close to Home door Michael Magee (Debut Fiction), The Swifts door Beth Lincoln (Children’s Fiction), en Strong Female Character door Fern Brady (Non-Fiction). In opzet is de prijs een opvolger van de Costa Book Awards (en daarvoor Whitbread Book Award), sinds 1971. Hannah Lowe won de laatste Costa in 2021.