Kingsolver, Schwartz and Alharthi shortlisted for the 2023 James Tait Black Prizes

Barbara Kingsolver, Selby Wynn Schwartz and Jokha Alharthi were among those whose work was shortlisted for this year’s James Tait Black Prizes.

The shortlists for Britain’s longest-running literary prizes featured a selection of books exploring themes such as belonging, travelling across borders and overcoming personal struggles. Presented by the University of Edinburgh since 1919, the awards are the only major British book prizes judged by literature scholars and students.

The four novels shortlisted for the £10,000 fiction prize included Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth (Scribner) and Demon Copperhead by Pulitzer Prize winner Barbara Kingsolver (Faber & Faber). Bolla by Pajtim Statovci, translated from Finnish by David Hackston (Faber & Faber), was also on the list, alongside Selby Wynn Schwartz’s After Sappho (Galley Beggar Press).

The shortlist for the £10,000 biography prize featured Homesick by Jennifer Croft (Charco Press) and A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Dorthe Nors, translated from Danish by Caroline Waight (Pushkin Press). Come Back in September: A Literary Education on West Sixty-Seventh Street, Manhattan by Darryl Pinckney (Riverrun) also made the list, as did A History of Water: Being an Account of a Murder, an Epic and Two Visions of Global History by Edward Wilson-Lee (William Collins).

The shortlists will be reread, annotated and discussed by students and scholars to decide the winners of both the prizes, which will be announced by the University of Edinburgh in July. The shortlist and winners will also be discussed as part of a James Tait Black sponsored event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, which is taking place at the University’s Edinburgh College of Art.

Fiction judge Dr Benjamin Bateman, of the University of Edinburgh, said of the lists: “The only thing more impressive than the historical and emotional range of these works is the way they centre their storytelling in elegantly and movingly rendered characters.”

Biography judge Dr Simon Cooke, of the University of Edinburgh, said: “Absorbing, resonantly voiced and beautifully realised, these life-writings open fascinating and various worlds, and searchingly inquire into the transformative relations between literature and life.”

The annual prizes are for the best work of fiction and biography written in or translated into English published in the previous 12 months.    

Since the prizes’ inception 100 years ago, the list of winners has included Angela Carter, Graham Greene and Ian McEwan. Equally stellar names appear on the list of biography winners, including Martin Amis, Quentin Bell and Hermione Lee. Amit Chaudhuri, Craig Brown and Lucy Ellmann have also joined the list in the last decade.

The University also offers a free online course in partnership with Edinburgh International Book Festival to give readers the chance to engage with judges and other readers on the shortlisted fiction books. The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), called "How to Read a Novel", draws on the James Tait Black fiction shortlist and has attracted nearly 60,000 participants from across the globe since it launched in 2017.