Where the Crawdads Sing

Delia Owens’ debut novel Where the Crawdads Sing is the first winner of this new gong, added to honour popular fiction titles across all formats. “Beautifully and sensitively written, it is a book that appeals to a wide variety of readers,” championed our judges.

The novel resists categorisation and is in equal parts coming-of-age story, murder mystery, romance and “sharply observed” nature writing. The themes of loneliness, isolation and the intimate connection between people and the natural world particularly resonated with our judges after such a turbulent pandemic-hit year.

Corsair had initially planned a UK tour for the author, including an event at Waterstones Piccadilly. When the pandemic hit, the 71-year-old author, who lives on a remote ranch in Idaho, persevered with publicity and gave a range of interviews via video calls.

The title became a word-of-mouth sensation and was labelled one of the “sleeper hits” of the year by the Guardian when it reached number one 11 months after publication. It has sold an impressive 344,928 copies through Nielsen BookScan’s TCM (excluding lockdown era sales) and has been optioned for film by Fox 2000, with Reese Witherspoon set to direct.