Honoring the achievements of the founding father of the historical novel, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world. The Walter Scott Prize’s eleventh shortlist has just been announced. The six books on the shortlist are:
- The Narrow Land by Christine Dwyer Hickey (Atlantic)
- The Parisian by Isabella Hammad (Jonathan Cape)
- To Calais, In Ordinary Time by James Meek (Canongate)
- Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker)
- The Redeemed by Tim Pears (Bloomsbury)
- A Sin of Omission by Marguerite Poland (Penguin South Africa)
Sponsored by the Duke and Duchess of Buccleuch, the Prize celebrates quality, innovation and durability in the English language, and is open to books first published in the previous year in the United Kingdom, Ireland or the Commonwealth.
The Prize was founded in 2009. In usual times, the winner of the Walter Scott Prize is announced in June at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose. However, the festival has been postponed due to the Covid-19 outbreak, so officials are currently reviewing how and when to announce and present the winner.
The judging panel is chaired by Katie Grant, and comprises Elizabeth Buccleuch, James Holloway, Elizabeth Laird, James Naughtie and Kirsty Wark.
The judges issued a statement: “In times of crisis, historical fiction is both reassurance (nothing is completely new) – and escape, so it’s with almost medicinal pleasure that we unveil the eleventh Walter Scott Prize shortlist which offers, we hope, a measure of both. Set aside your anxieties and smell greasepaint with Bram Stoker. Share Leo Sercombe’s incredulity as the German fleet scuttles at Scapa Flow. Lament, for Stephen Mzamane, the injustices in the nineteenth-century Anglican church. With Thomas, Will and the Lady Bernadine, delight in a fourteenth-century linguistic tour-de-force. Linger inside the minds of the artist Edward Hopper and his wife. And savor a glorious twentieth century epic of the Middle East written with such sparkling immediacy you’re more witness than reader. Six books from writers as varied as they are talented. Six books to absorb. Six books to fortify. Enjoy them all!”