David Mitchell receives Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence

Novelist David Mitchell has received the Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence, given in recognition of a writer's entire body of work.

Mitchell is the author of seven novels, including Booker Prize-shortlisted novels number9dream (Sceptre, 2001) and Cloud Atlas (Sceptre, 2004), The Bone Clocks (Sceptre, 2014) and Slade House (Sceptre, 2015), and a number of short stories.

He joins a list of prestigious writers to have won the prize, including 1987's inaugural winner Anthony Burgess and last year's winner Sarah Waters, as well as Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Harold Pinter, Anne Tyler, Muriel Spark, John le Carré, William Trevor, Margaret Atwood, Julian Barnes, Tom Stoppard, Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Martin Amis, Peter Carey and Karl Ove Knausgaard.

The prize doesn't come with any money, but, according to The Times, the winning author will receive "an appropriate gift".

Carole Welch, publisher at Sceptre, Mitchell's long-term publishing house, commented: "This is a marvellous accolade for David Mitchell. The Sunday Times Award is unusual in being for a body of work and this kind of recognition and appreciation of all David's books means a great deal. Sceptre acquired his first novel Ghostwritten in 1998, and working with David for the past 20 years has always been both a privilege and a pleasure. In winning this award, David joins illustrious company and we are very proud of him."

Mitchell will be interviewed at the Cheltenham Literature Festival by Sunday Times chief fiction reviewer Peter Kemp on Saturday 6th October.