Adam Kay wins Book Of The Year title

Wednesday 22nd November 2017, 9:31am

Adam Kay has won the Book Of The Year title for his junior doctor memoir This is Going to Hurt
The Books Are My Bag Awards are determined by votes from over 40,000 bookshop customers
Kay is now adapting the book for TV, and writing a follow-up called 100 Patients Who Changed My Life

Adam Kay has won the Book Of The Year title.

The comedy writer, who has worked on TV shows including Bounty Hunters, Mrs Brown's Boys and Crims, was formerly a junior doctor, and This is Going to Hurt - published in September - focuses on his experiences as a trainee in obstetrics and gynaecology.

The book won in the Readers' Choice category in the Books Are My Bag Awards, which are voted on by over 40,000 members of the public through bookshops.

Kay was a junior doctor from 2004 until 2010, before an experience on the ward caused him to rethink his future. He decided to go public with his memoirs amid politician Jeremy Hunt's attacks on the pay and conditions for junior doctors. He initially performed a one-man show at the Edinburgh Festival, and was then commissioned by publishers Picador to turn them into a book. This is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Junior Doctor was published in September.

It was a double-win for This is Going to Hurt, which also was selected as a winner in the Non Fiction category.

Speaking about his win, Adam Kay said: "I'm beyond thrilled to win the Books Are My Bag Non-Fiction award and beyond beyond thrilled to win the Readers' Choice award. Thanks so much to the wonderful bookshops and booksellers who chose me for the shortlist, and to the book buyers who voted for me. Lovely and humbling as it has been to read nice words about the book in the newspapers, I wrote it for readers not newspapers, and that's what makes this such an honour.

"When the junior doctors were coming under fire from the government for 'being greedy' it was so heart-breaking that the medics were struggling to get their story across. (Presumably because they were working 97-hour weeks.) Hopefully I've done my little bit to help people understand what it means to be a junior doctor and how ridiculous the government's position is."

Alan Staton, head of marketing and communications at the Booksellers Association, which runs the Books Are My Bag Awards, said: "Last year's readers' choice was The Good Immigrant, which was very much the book of the moment, and Adam Kay's is very much the same this year, igniting conversations, and so it is no surprise it has won."

Kay has currently adapting the book for television and also writing a second book. 100 Patients Who Changed My Life will be published in Autumn 2019.

Kay recently spoke about his book and the state of the NHS on The Russell Howard Hour:

Adam Kay - This Is Going To Hurt: Secret Diaries Of A Junior Doctor

Adam Kay was a junior doctor from 2004 until 2010, before a devastating experience on a ward caused him to reconsider his future. He kept a diary throughout his training, and This Is Going To Hurt intersperses tales from the front line of the NHS with reflections on the current crisis. The result is a first-hand account of life as a junior doctor in all its joy, pain, sacrifice and maddening bureaucracy, and a love letter to those who might at any moment be holding our lives in their hands.

First published: Thursday 7th September 2017

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