Photo: Polako Press
It's not just the cover of a book we judge, despite the old saying, but those first few pages also have to grab us.
Pip McKay did such a great job in the opening pages of her latest novel The Telling Time, that she won the 2020 First Pages Prize with the panel including author Sebastian Faulks. The novel is set both in New Zealand in the 1980s, and in the former Yugoslavia in the late 1950s.
It's the story of Gabrrijela who must leave her home to take up a job in New Zealand, and of her daughter Luisa who wants to find out about her homeland and her family back there.
The Telling Time by Pip McKay is published by Polako Press.