Laura Cumming took the Book of the Year on Thursday evening 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 multi-award-winning Scottish novelist, short story writer, essayist and playwright James Kelman. 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 .
At an exclusive ceremony held in Edinburgh’s Central Hall, supported by Waterstones and hosted by Coinneach MacLeod – otherwise known as The Hebridean Baker – well-known faces from the worlds of publishing, bookselling and journalism gathered to pay tribute to all the shortlisted authors as selected by the teams of judges in each category, and to honour the winners. On celebrating with this year’s winners, Mairi Kidd, Director of The Saltire Society, said: “In their deliberations, the judges returned again and again to the words ‘unexpected’ and ‘surprising’. As overall winner, Thunderclap perfectly embodies this se.
