Zadie Smith, Paul Murray and Naomi Klein are among the authors who have been shortlisted for the Writers’ prize, the award previously known as the Rathbones Folio prize.
Smith’s first historical novel The Fraud and Murray’s Booker-shortlisted tale The Bee Sting are joined on the fiction shortlist by The Wren, the Wren, Anne Enright’s story of an unhappy family that Elizabeth Lowry called “intimate and ambiguous” in her Guardian review.
Meanwhile in the nonfiction category, Thunderclap by the Observer’s art critic Laura Cumming and A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell have been shortlisted alongside Klein’s exploration of truth in politics, Doppelganger.
Completing the shortlist are three poetry collections: Self-Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant, The Home Child by Liz Berry and Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan.
The Observer’s poetry critic Kate Kellaway described reading Chan’s second collection, about the poet’s parents coming to terms with their child’s sexuality, as being “like testing the blade of a knife and finding it exquisitely sharp”.
One winner from each of the three categories will be awarded a £2,000 prize, and of these three, one writer will be crowned the overall winner, receiving an additional £30,000.
At last year’s Rathbones Folio prize ceremony it was announced that investment management company Rathbones would be stepping down as sponsor, and prize director Minna Fry said that the award was seeking new sponsorship.
In November last year the award announced its rebrand as the Writers’ prize. “Thanks to the generosity of a number of private individuals, book industry-related businesses, members of the Folio Academy and Trusts, the prize will go ahead with the same prize pot of £36,000,” the statement read.
However, in a new development, there are no judges for this year’s prize, and the shortlists have been chosen by the members of the Folio Academy, which is made up of more than 350 acclaimed writers. Having voted for the shortlist, academy members will now have access to all nine titles thanks to a partnership with NetGalley, a company that provides electronic copies of books to reviewers. Academy members will then vote for their winners, which will be announced at the London book fair on 13 March.
“I’m absolutely delighted with this year’s shortlists, which seem to reflect the very best of 2023’s literature and include several titles that I’ve personally been surprised not to see on other prizes’ lists,” Fry said. “We are grateful to the academy, which has taken seriously its responsibility for highlighting and singling out these wonderful books, and we hugely look forward to seeing the eventual winners emerge.”
“The prize could not be happening without the financial support of business corporations, literary and charitable institutions, and members of the Folio Academy. I hope very much that this year’s prize will justify their faith in us and help to secure funding for a strong future,” she added.
Last year, Margo Jefferson won the overall Rathbones Folio prize for her “astounding and rhapsodic book” Constructing a Nervous System. Previous winners of the prize have included Colm Tóibín, Carmen Maria Machado and Valeria Luiselli.
