Steve Toltz shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award
It was great to see Steve Toltz’s A Fraction of the Whole on the shortlist for the Guardian First Book Award last week. We are all hoping that he might follow Hamish Hamilton writers Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer in winning the prize, which is announced in early December.
The Guardian news story describes it as “a cantering, carnivalesque Australian saga” with “a strongly individual, distinctive narrative voice: a rumbustious, funny page-turner that tells the story of Jasper, now behind bars, his father, Martin, and his uncle, the criminal mastermind Terry.”
The £10,000 prize – which covers fiction, non-fiction and poetry published in the UK – is unique not only in its recognition of debut authors, but also through the extent to which it involves readers’ groups in the judging process.
The panel that will select the winner includes novelist Roddy Doyle, broadcaster and novelist Francine Stock, poet Daljit Nagra, historian David Kynaston, novelist Kate Mosse and Guardian deputy editor Katharine Viner. Readers’ groups’ views will be represented by Waterstone’s Stuart Broom, who said: “What was especially noticeable this year was how much readers demand: they wanted big books, big themes and ambitious prose that soared.”
Fingers crossed!