Double nomination for Chatto & Windus on £25k Walter Scott Prize shortlist

Tom Crewe’s The New Life and Rose Tremain’s Absolutely and Forever, both published by Chatto & Windus, are among the six titles shortlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. The winner will receive a cash prize of £25,000, while each shortlisted author receives £1,500.

Thist follows February’s announcement that the prize is under the new management of the Abbotsford Trust, which safeguard’s novellist Sir Walter Scott’s former home in the Scottish Borders. 

Joining Crewe and Tremain on the shortlist are Kai Thomas with In The Upper Country (John Murray) and Joseph O’Connor with My Father’s House (Harvill Secker). Hungry Ghosts (Bloomsbury) by Kevin Jared Hosein and House of Doors (Canongate) by Tan Twan Eng also made the list. 

This year’s judging panel is chaired by Katie Grant, and comprises James Holloway, Elizabeth Laird, James Naughtie, Kirsty Wark and Saira Shah.  

In a joint statement, they said: “The Walter Scott Prize judging criteria – originality, innovation, ambition, durability and of course quality of writing – are beautifully showcased in our 2024 shortlist. In addition, we have six novels as diverse in their subject-matter as in style of writing: an attempted sexual revolution in 18th century London; dangerously entwined lives in 1940s Trinidad; gripping tensions in Nazi-occupied Rome; a gentle 1960s home-counties heartbreaker; stories within stories from the terminus of the Underground Railroad; and love, betrayal and scandal in the Straits Settlements of Penang. At the heart of each novel lies a deep understanding of humanity in all its quirky strengths and weaknesses, with each of the WSP 2024 shortlisted authors having something new to say and a new way of saying it.”

First awarded in 2010, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction honours the inventor of the historical fiction genre, Sir Walter Scott. Books must have been written in English, set more than 60 years ago, and published during 2023 in the UK, Ireland or the Commonwealth. Shortlisted authors this year are from England, Ireland, Trinidad, Canada and Malaysia. 

Supported by the Hawthornden Foundation and the Duke of Buccleuch, the prize winner will be announced at a special public event with shortlist at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose on Thursday 13th June 2024. The event will also honour the winners of the prize’s counterpart for young writers, the Young Walter Scott Prize. Tickets are now on sale for the event here.