(1888PressRelease)
December 22, 2007 - Her novel, The Door of No Return, beat five other short listed contestants, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction prize winner, Finding Violet Park by Jenny Valentine, to win the Children’s Category. The Door of No Return, a novel for 11-14 year olds, is a thriller centering on a young black boy from Gloucester who travels to Africa in search of treasure, but who instead unearths the truth about his family’s terrible ordeals during the slave trade era.
Held in association with the Irish Writer’s Centre, the annual Glen Dimplex New Writers Awards offer unprecedented support and exposure for emerging writers in a range of genres. Awards are given to an author’s first published book within each of the following five categories: Fiction, Poetry, Children’s literature, Biography/Non-fiction and Irish-language (all genres).
Sarah Mussi’s The Door of No Return, published to coincide with the bi-centenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, offers a unique perspective on life on the Slave Coast of Ghana during the 1700s. Bridging the gap between past and present to appeal to children across the world, the novel’s main character is a twenty-first century witty and streetwise kid. Sixteen-year-old hoodie, Zac, is ‘wholly disarming’, and is brought to life through ‘consistently robust, vivid and tensile writing.’
Kevin Crossley-Holland, the awarding judge, commented: “The Door of No Return is a powerful and extremely well-plotted modern adventure novel rooted in the terrible actuality and legacy of the African slave trade. Unlike so many of the overlong fantasy fiction submissions in the children’s book category, Sarah Mussi bravely engages with the most serious issues – friendship, trust, betrayal, greed, degradation, survival and the presence of the past.” Sarah Mussi has also received praise from the critics for her novel, with Esi Sutherland Addy commenting on how she has made a ‘vitally important contribution to a debate that must … challenge the dominant narrative which … seeks to ignore the … consequences of the slave trade that constitutes the injustice lived daily by millions… ‘
Receiving the prize in Dublin, Sarah Mussi, said: “I am delighted to be awarded this honour, not just for myself and my editor, Beverley Birch, but also for my hero character Zac. If Zac, a young black youth, has touched the hearts of the judges with his narrative, I have high hopes that he will appeal greatly to his readers.”
The Door of No Return, paperback: 448 pages, is published by Hodder Children’s Books (19 April 2007) at £5.99. ISBN-10: 034090321X ISBN-13: 978-0340903216.
###
