Filed under: Literature | Tags: Alcemi, Edinburgh International Book Festival, Gee Williams, James Tait Black Memorial Prize, Mohsin Hamid, Salvage, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Back in February, I wrote that I was reading for the James Tait Black Memorial prize for literature. The shortlist for “Britain’s oldest literary prize” has just been announced.
For Fiction:
Our Horses in Egypt, Rosalind Belben
The Devil’s Footprints, John Burnside
The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Mohsin Hamid
A Far Country, Daniel Mason
Salvage, Gee Williams
Special mention should go to Gee William’s Salvage, which is not only the solitary finalist by a first-time novelist, but is also the only novel not issued by a major publisher. Alcemi is a small, bilingual Welsh imprint from the independent publishing house Y Lolfa, and boasts only a handful of titles to its name. I read Williams’s book during the review process and hers was by far the best of the bunch. You can read my review of Salvage (as well as that of another finalist I reviewed, Mohsin Hamid’s excellent The Reluctant Fundamentalist) in the original post.
The prize, an impressive £10,000, will be awarded in August as part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. See you there.
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