Powerhouse children's author Katherine Rundell has won the Waterstones 2023 Book of the Year for her September-released fantasy novel, Impossible Creatures.
Described by reviewers as "a masterpiece to rival Tolkien and Pullman" and "wildly imaginative, impossibly brilliant", the story follows Christopher, a boy who discovers that all the creatures of myth still living on a hidden Archipelago of magical islands.
Over the centuries, sealed off from the human world, they have been doing very well, and are now thriving in their thousands. But when their protectionary wall starts to wear thin, and creatures suddenly start dying out, Christopher, with his new friend Mal, tries to find out what is really happening.
"This is as close to perfect as fiction gets: immaculate world-building, dazzling storytelling, and adventure galore," said Bea Carvalho, Waterstones' Head of Books. "Rundell isn't afraid to trust young readers with weighty themes, but never loses sight of the need to make reading joyous and fun, celebrating humour with as much care as awe and wonder. It is an immediate classic."
Rundell's book, which was up against works from authors including Zadie Smith and Ann Patchett, has won alongside Alice Winn's In Memoriam, which has been awarded the title of Waterstones Novel of the Year 2023. Waterstones Book of the Year is chosen by Waterstones' booksellers, who nominate and then vote for their favourite page-turner.
Rundell said: "The fact that this book has won rather than any of my others is so thrilling because this, in being a children’s book that I hope could also be read by adults, is the book that I hope could speak to everyone. It has the best of everything that I’ve learned and that I’ve read and all of the scholarship I’ve come across in the last 15 years of my working life, and a kind of distillation of everything I know and hope."
The 36-year-old All Souls College fellow published her first novel aged just 24 years old. Since then, she has published a further nine books, including Impossible Creatures, and has won Waterstones Children's Book Prize, the Blue Peter Book Award for Best Story, and was short-listed for the Carnegie Medal in 2014. In 2022 she was also shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year, for her book In the Golden Mole.
"There was Tolkien, there is Pullman and now there is Katherine Rundell," said Michael Morpurgo, reviewing her latest novel. "Katherine Rundell is a phenomenon," said Neil Gaiman.
Despite a history of wins, Rundell said she was surprised by today's announcement: "I did not believe it until they showed me it in writing," she said. "I made my editor show me written-out proof.” The author is now working on a second novel to add to the nascent Impossible Creatures series.
Born in Kent, Rundell spent the formative years of her life in Zimbabwe, where, she once said, "didn't wear shoes, and there was none of the teenage culture that exists in Europe. My friends and I were still climbing trees and having swimming competitions". At 14 years old she moved to Belgium, before attending Oxford.
