The Costa-winning novelist AL Kennedy. Photograph: Martin Godwin
Last week, AL Kennedy's novel, Day, was named by Costa as their book of the year, beating Simon Sebag Montefiore's biography of Stalin, Jean Sprackland's poetry collection Tilt, Catherine O'Flynn's debut What Was Lost and Ann Kelley's novel for children The Bower Bird to the overall prize.
Day is the story of Alfie Day, a tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber during the second world war, who is captured and held in a prison camp towards the end of the war. In the 1949 of the novel he is working as an extra on a prisoner of war film, remembering his own war experiences, reflecting on his troubled family, and seeking a way to move forward.
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