WHITBREAD WINNER ANNOUNCED

Andrea Levy has won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award for her novel “Small Island” (Picador), the story of a Jamaican couple living in post-World War II London.

Ms. Levy, who won the Orange Prize for Women’s Fiction last year for “Small Island,” was one of five category winners who competed for the Book of the Year Award. The category prize, for first Novel, Novel, Biography, Poetry, and Children’s Book, is worth £5,000 ($9,320), while the Book of the Year Award is worth £25,000 ($46,595).Thus, Ms. Levy will receive £30,000 ($55,940).

Susan Fletcher’s “Eve Green” (Fourth Estate), the story of an 8-year-old Wales girl discovering secrets in her family, was the winner of the Whitbread First Novel Award. The Biography Award went to historian John Guy for his book about Mary Queen of Scots, “My Heart is My Own” (Fourth Estate), published in this country as “Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart” (Houghton Mifflin). The 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award went to Michael Symmons Roberts for “Corpus” (Jonathan Cape). And author Geraldine McCaughrean won the children’s book award for “Not the End of the World” (Oxford).

The judges, among whom was the British actor Hugh Grant, said that “Andrea Levy was a clear winner.”