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Soobramanien and Williams become first duo to win Goldsmiths Prize
Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams have won the £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize for their “extraordinary” novel Diego Garcia (Fitzcarraldo Editions), becoming the first duo to win in the award’s 10-year history.
The pair were announced as the winners at the award’s first in-person ceremony in three years, held in association with the New Statesman, on 10th November.
Their novel follows two writer friends and their meeting with a poet called Diego who tells them he is named after his mother’s island in the Chagos Archipelago, which she and her community were forced to leave by British soldiers in 1973. The friends become obsessed with this notorious episode and the continuing resistance of the Chagossian people.
The book beat off competition from a shortlist featuring Mona Arshi’s Somebody Loves You (And Other Stories), Seven Steeples by Sara Baume (Tramp Press), Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies by Maddie Mortimer (Picador), Helen Oyeyemi’s Peaces (Faber & Faber), and there are more things by Yara Rodrigues Fowler (Fleet).
Tim Parnell, chair of the judges, said: “By turns funny, moving and angry, Diego Garcia is as compelling to read as it is intricately wrought. For Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams, collaboration is both method and politics.
“Against the dogmatism of the single-voiced fiction that informed the British government’s expulsion of the Chagossian people from their homeland, they respond not only with rigorous critique, but also with an understanding of the relationship between voice and power that shapes the very form of Diego Garcia. A marvellous book which extends the scope of the novel form.”
Tom Gatti, prize judge and executive editor of culture at the New Statesman, said: “Since it was founded 10 years ago, the Goldsmiths Prize has helped transform the British and Irish literary landscape. In Diego Garcia it has a winner whose inventive spirit is truly in keeping with that of the prize.”
Diego Garcia was a long-term collaboration, which took 10 years to complete, co-writing across countries. The novel was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions on 25th May and is the second major award the indie has scooped this year after Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize.
Judge Ali Smith said: “An extraordinary achievement, this single novel composed by two writers is both a paean to connectivity and a profound study of the tragedy of human disconnect. At its core is an excoriation of a set of specific colonial foulnesses and injustices: the forced depopulation of the Chagos Islands and their expedient use by the UK and the US as a military base and bargaining chip.
“At its heart is an experiment with form that asks what fiction is, what art is for, and how, against the odds, to make visible, questionable and communal the structures, personal and political, of contemporary society, philosophy, lived history.”
The award celebrates fiction “at its most novel”, and was open to books published between 1st November 2021 and 31st October 2022.
Professor Frances Corner, warden of Goldsmiths, University of London, said: “With the support of our media partner the New Statesman, the prize has matured into a fixture of the UK’s literary calendar, amplifying the work of writers who dare to do things differently.
“The qualities of creative daring for so long associated with Goldsmiths are once again exemplified in this 10th shortlist. My warmest congratulations go to all the nominees and to Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams as this year’s winners.”
Soobramanien and Williams will appear at the Cambridge Literary Festival, in association with the New Statesman, on 19th November.
