John Spurling’s TheTen Thousand Things, the story of Wang Meng, a minor bureaucrat of imperial China who found solace in his exquisite painting during the dying years of the Yuan dynasty, has won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. Alistair Moffat, the chairman of the judges said “the illumination shone by John Spurling…
Books with a special sense of place vie for Ondaatje Prize
Baghdad, Delhi, Estonia, Cornwall, the east end of London and Turkey are the stars in the shortlist for the Ondaatje Prize which celebrates “a distinguished work of fiction, non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place”. Rana Dasgupta Capital (Canongate) Helen Dunmore The Lie (Hutchinson) Tobias Hill What Was Promised (Bloomsbury Circus) Justin Marozzi Baghdad: City of Peace,…
Longlist of best historical novels released
And the Oscar goes to … oops, sorry, wrong golden moment. Just as the stars were celebrating winning an illustrious bald statue, 15 authors were having their own, quieter, moment of pleasure having been named on the longlist for the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish novelist and poet, is considered by many a founding father of the historical novel with Ivanhoe, one of the collection known as the Waverley Novels, amongst his most famous books.
In coming up with the award longlist, which increased from 12 last year, the judges did a considerable amount of time travelling from 11th Century England (The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth) to 17th Century Amsterdam (The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton) to 20th Century Europe (The Zone by Martin Amis) and occasionally, even further afield. The shortlist will be announced next month with the final winner being revealed at the Borders Book Festival in June. Previous winners are: Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall), Andrea Levy (The Long Story), Sebastian Barry (On Canaan’s Side), Tan Twan Eng (The Garden of Evening Mists) and Robert Harris (An Officer and a Spy).
The full long list is: