Goldsmiths Prize unveils ‘exhilarating’ shortlist in 10th anniversary year

Six “eye-opening, exhilarating” books have been shortlisted for the 10th annual Goldsmiths Prize for fiction that “breaks the mould and extends the possibilities of the novel form”.

A judging panel made up of authors Ali Smith and Natasha Brown, executive editor of culture at the New Statesman Tom Gatti and prize director Tim Parnell picked books by Mona Arshi, Sara Baume, Maddie Mortimer, Helen Oyeyemi, Yara Rodrigues Fowler and Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams. 

Arshi is up for the award with Somebody Loves You (And Other Stories), while Baume is picked for her novel Seven Steeples (Tramp Press) and Maddie Mortimer for Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador), which won the Desmond Elliott Prize earlier this year.

Also in the running is Oyeyemi’s Peaces (Faber & Faber), Rodrigues Fowler’s there are more things (Fleet) and Diego Garcia by Soobramanien and Williams (Fitzcarraldo Editions).

The shortlist for the award was announced on 5th October at the end of an event with Goldsmiths Prize 2021 winner Isabel Waidner, in conversation with 2020 winner M John Harrison.

Parnell said: “In the year of our 10th birthday, we are delighted to announce a shortlist that so clearly exemplifies the spirit of the Goldsmiths Prize. All six novels are strikingly distinctive, but they are united in their creative daring. Unwilling to keep treading the beaten track, our authors have found new ways of telling, to eye-opening and exhilarating effect.”

The £10,000 winner of the 2022 Goldsmiths Prize will be announced on 10th November and the winner will make their first public appearance at the Cambridge Literary Festival on 19th November.

Gatti commented: “The New Statesman was there at the inception of the prize, and it’s a privilege to be returning to judge the Goldsmiths in its 10th year. No other award has done as much to transform the literary landscape over the past decade.”

The Goldsmiths Prize was launched in association with the New Statesman in 2013. Each year it awards a book that is deemed genuinely novel that the judging panel believes embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best.