2021 Costa Book of the Year Odds: Which Category Winner Will Get the Award?

The five category winners of the 2021 Costa Book Awards have been revealed on the 4th of January. From these five winners, one will be selected as the 2021 Costa Book of the Year on the 1st of February. The  2021 Costa Book of the Year odds slightly favor the winner of the Best Novel category, Claire Fuller with Unsettled Ground. But the other category winners have similar chances of winning according to the bookmakers. 

The Costa Book Awards have been organized since 1971. So this year the judges selected the best books of the year for the 51st time. There are five categories in the awards: novel, first book, children’s book, poetry, biography. Each category winners receive £5000. While from the five category winners, another special jury selects the final winner of the Book of the Year award, who receives a further £30,000. In the previous top finishers, we can find world-famous writers like Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, and Zadie Smith. The most recent winners include Sally Rooney and Helen Mcdonald, who also won the Book of the Year award for H is for Hawk. 

2021 Costa Book of the Year Odds Favor Novel Winner Claire Fuller

Claire Fuller won the novel category this year with Unsettled Ground, her fourth novel. The book is about twins, Jeanie and Julius who take care of their mother in an isolated, rural area. After her sudden death, they face eviction and other issues they are not prepared for. The novel has received generally good reviews “as a powerful tale about country life”. It is also in the shortlist of the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Now online sportsbooks in the UK offer the smallest odds, 3.24 for its victory at the Costa Book of the Year award. 

John Preston’s biography, The Mystery of Robert Maxwell is a big favorite as well in the  2021 Costa Book of the Year odds. It tells the story of successful media mogul and MP Maxwell whose empire couldn’t survive his death. Preston is a former arts editor and tv critic who also wrote four novels before. One of them was The Dig, a novel about an archeological dig at Sutton Hoo with the film version available on Netflix. While his previous non-fiction piece, A Very English Scandal was also made into a TV miniseries. The Mystery of Robert Maxwell will also be adapted for television. And it has an odds of 4.00 to win the award. 

First Novel Winner Caleb Azumah Can Also Get The Award

Caleb Azumah is a British-Ghanaian writer and photographer. His first novel, Open Water was praised by critics as “deeply moving” and “truly exceptional”. It is about two Black British artists, a photographer and a dancer who fall in love but they are still torn apart. Azumah started to write his book after the death of his aunt, godfather, and three grandparents. He left his job at Apple and spent most of his time in the British Library. It seems like it was worth it. As the novel was also shortlisted for the Waterstones Book of the Year award. It also finished in the top 10 in Booklist’s Best First Novels. Online gambling sites in the UK offer the odds of 4.50 for its win in the Book of the Year Award.

While Manjeet Maan’s children’s book, The Crossing has the odds of 5.00 on 22Bet. The famous Indian film producer and director’s second book was inspired by the refugee crisis. It is about two teenagers from opposite worlds. Natalie, who lost her Mum, and Sammy, who fled Eritrea in order to start a new life in Europe. A powerful tale that was also nominated for the 2022 Carnegie Medal. The last nominee to become the Book of the Year is poetry winner Hannah Lowe with her third collection, The Kids. It is based on her experience as a teacher in an inner-city London school. Her sonnets are also about growing up, learning and parenthood. The collection was also shortlisted for the 2021 T.S. Eliot Prize and has the odds of 6.00 to win the Costa award. 

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