Laura Cumming took the Book of the Year this evening (Thursday 28^th November) for Thunderclap, a memoir on the art of the Dutch Golden Age, as The Saltire Society presented Scotland’s National Book Awards, one of the oldest literary prizes in the UK. 

 

The prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award went to James Kelman, multi-award-winning Scottish novelist, short story writer, essayist and playwright. 

 

Thunderclap – which also took Non-Fiction Book of the Year and which explores the relationship between art and life, interweaving reflections on Laura Cumming, her late Scottish painter father James Cumming RSA, and the great artists of the Dutch Golden Age – the judges said:

“On first reading, we found it elegantly detached; on reading again we were struck by the human stories at its core. We knew it would stay on our bookshelves and we would return to it again and again.”

Recognising exceptional talent across Scotland’s contemporary literary scene and celebrating the breadth of style, subject and individual flair on offer, other Awards included: for Fiction, What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close; for Poetry, John Burnside’s final collection, Ruin, Blossom; for First Book, Jen Stout’s memoir Night Train to Odesa; and for Research, England’s Insular Imagining by Lorna Hutson, an exploration of the Tudor marginalisation of Scotland.

The Fiction Book of the Year, What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close is a police-procedural-meets-feminist-reimagining set around Leeds and Bradford in the late 1970s and early 80s, based on the case of the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe who terrorised Ajay Close’s native Yorkshire at that time.  The judges called the novel, “Superb, evocative and enraging, with brilliant characterisation, humour, and a huge sense of tension from the ever-present threat of violence.”

The First Book of the Year, sponsored by Creative Scotland, identifies rising stars as their talent continues to develop and was this year awarded to Night Train to Odesa by Jen Stout, which was praised by the judges as an “accomplished and beautiful work, blending journalism, memoir, history, art” as it conveys the very personal human horrors of Russian aggression in Ukraine in a profound debut which moves seamlessly between the epic and the intimate.

The Poetry Book of the Year is awarded posthumously this year to John Burnside for Ruin, Blossom, which was published in April of this year, only a month before Burnside’s death.  The judges called the collection “impeccable”, adding: “A tremendously good, mature, sustained volume, exploring ageing, mortality, environmental crisis and wellbeing, mourning that which is lost while recognising hope.”

The Award for Research Book of the Year went to England’s Insular Imagining by Lorna Hutson. The volume explores Tudor efforts first to justify an attempted Scottish conquest and then to remake Scotland's nationhood in service of an Anglo-imperial view of history. The judges said it would be “a landmark text across multiple disciplines.”’

Winners List

Book of the Year & Non-fiction Winner: Thunderclap by Laura Cumming (Chatto and Windus, Vintage, Penguin Random House)

Fiction Winner: What Doesn’t Kill Us by Ajay Close (Saraband)

First Book Winner: Night Train to Odesa by Jen Stout (Birlinn Ltd) (non-fiction)

Poetry Winner: RUIN, BLOSSOM, John Burnside (Jonathan Cape, Vintage, PRH)

Research Winner: England’s Insular Imagining by Lorna Hutson (Cambridge University Press and Assessment)