A book of a caretaker who has long read the writer about the true story of a couple who lost the sea for 118 days in the 70s after their boat hurt a whale won Nero’s gold prize.
Sophie Elmhirst was shown at the £ 30,000 award for her book Maurice and Maralyn: a rare true story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love at a ceremony in London on Wednesday night.
The book “is an appealing, entertaining story of salvation and the stability of the human spirit”, the judgment of Bill Bryson said. “Surprisingly the novel in the approach to its narration, it is a disturbing retelling of a true but forgotten story.”
Maurice and Maralyn were revealed as the general book of the year after winning a category of non -conceptual awards in January. It was selected for the golden prize at Lost In The Garden by Adam’s Leslie, who won the fiction category; Colin Barrett’s wild houses, who won the category of debut fiction; And Liz Hyder’s twelve, illustrated by Tom de Freston, who won the children’s fiction category. Each of the four categories won received £ 5,000.
This year the second repeat of the Nero Prize, which was launched after Costa Coffee suddenly completed the awards in the book of 2022. Paul Murray’s bee was selected as the inaugural winner of the Gold Prize.
Maurice and Maralyn tell the story of a couple who are married, bored of suburban life in the derby, decide to sell their house, build a boat and sail for New Zealand. However, 250 miles north of Ecuador, a sperm whale exploded in the boat, and they were driven for about four months in the Pacific ocean in a lifeboat.
Elmhirst marshals their story in an “electrifying narrative full of environment and humanity and the light dust of romance,” Fiona Sturges wrote in a book guardian review. “Maurice and Maralyn are about a shipwreck, yes, but it is also a soft picture of two non -interrelated souls that blithely defying the conventions of their time and resting for freedom.”
As well as being a story about sea survival and physical endurance, the book marries a wedding under immense stress. “For what a wedding is, really, if not stuck in a small raft with someone and trying to survive?”, Elmhirst wrote.
“Lighting is the bravery and strength of the heroine”, Bryson said. “As Maurice Flounders, Maralyn’s strength that allows them to live in the sea”, added that the book “is a honors to Maralyn’s grit”. Book research, Elmhirst studied Maralyn Diaries to write to the Raft, couples’ interviews after their rescue and memoirs they wrote.
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Elmhirst is a journalist who regularly writes for The Guardian Long Read and other newspapers including the 1843 magazine of the economist and the New Yorker. Maurice and Maralyn are her first book. He described the winning of the Nero Nero Nonfiction Category Award such as “given a lovely -love translation of confidence”.
Next to Bryson, the Gold Prize Judging Panel with the author who won the Booker and Royal Society of Literature President Bernardine Evaristo and journalist Emily Maitlis.
“Elmhirst’s writing is understated but strong, to dip the reader close to the unmistakable drama and the terrible -terrible struggle to survive against the odds with minimal resources,” Bryson said. “We are unanimously that Maurice and Maralyn are a work -made work that reaches the highest literary eminence”.
The Wednesday’s ceremony also saw the announcement of a new award, the Nero New Writers Prize, which will run in contact with Brunel University. Invited non -published writers to submit 5,000 words of original adult fiction, children’s fiction or creative non -work, including the winner of a cash reward, a scholar study for a MA in creative writing in brunel and an opening meeting with an agent of literature.
