Graduate misses out on book award - graduate jobs

University of East Anglia graduate Adam Foulds has narrowly missed out on winning the Costa Book of the Year Award.

Adam Foulds lost out to Sebastian Barry, who won with his novel The Secret Scripture.

The creative writing graduate came a close second and chairman of the judges Matthew Parris said the decision was "extraordinarily close" with judges split five to four.

It took a judging panel, made up of comedian Alexander Armstrong, journalist Michael Buerk and actresses Rosamund Pike and Pauline McLynn, an hour and a quarter to decide

Adam, who now lives in South London, did win the Poetry Award for The Broken Word. The book charts a young man's progress through a dark period in British colonial history - the Mau Mau uprisings in Kenya.

His poetry has appeared in a number of literary magazines and in April last year he won The Sunday Times Young Writer of The Year Award.

The judges said: "It is a rare achievement to write a poetry book that the reader simply can't put down. Readers of poetry and fiction alike will be swept along by its chilling narrative."