Betty Trask Award – Alex Christofi

The Betty Trask award is for first novels by authors under the age of 35. The awards are given to traditional or romantic novels rather than those of an experimental style. It has a track record of spotting stars of the future including Zadie Smith, Keiran Desai, Evie Wyld, Adam Foulds, Sarah Waters and Chibundu Onuzo. Each year the awards total £20,000 with one author receiving a larger amount called the Prize.

Alex Christofi – Glass coverThe winner of the 2016 Prize is debut novelist Alex Christofi from Dorset. His novel Glass, published by Serpent’s Tail, is described as ‘pitch perfect’ and ‘a passionate, rollicking and witty London novel’ by Michèle Roberts, one of the judges. The novel is about an innocent and eccentric oddball who is obsessed by glass and becomes a celebrity window cleaner after an incident on the spire of Salisbury Cathedral. He moves to London and tries to navigate life in a city he doesn’t fully understand.

The novel explores themes of What is a good life? Does being good mean intervening in the lives of others even when you might make things worse? The Guardian concludes ‘Glass, as gentle and bumbling as its narrator, shows us that the only way to live a good life is to dive in, no matter how messy and unpredictable things get‘.