Sarah Mussi's 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 of the Glen Dimplex Award.

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.

Read Sarah Oliver's review

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.”

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