The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023 – My Wrap-Up

The announcement of the winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023 on 15th June 2023 at the Borders Book Festival – These Days by Lucy Caldwell – was the final stage in a process that began in August last year when submissions opened.

Over the next few months, books submitted by publishers were whittled down by the judging panel to a longlist of twelve which was announced on 14th February 2023.  The books that made the longlist were:

The Romantic by William Boyd
These Days by Lucy Caldwell
My Name is Yip by Paddy Crewe
The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan
Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph
The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry
The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk
The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
Ancestry by Simon Mawer
I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam
The Settlement by Jock Serong

As an avid reader of historical fiction I like to think I have my finger on the pulse but, as usual, the longlist provided some surprises with books I’d not only not read, but never even come across. In fact, I’d only read two of the books that appeared on the list – These Days and The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho. And my attempt to predict the books that might appear on the longlist was pretty much a failure – I only got three right.

I managed to read three more of the longlisted books – The Romantic, I Am Not Your Eve and The Settlement – before the shortlist of seven books was announced on 4th April 2023.

These Days by Lucy Caldwell
The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan
Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris
The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry
The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane
Ancestry by Simon Mawer
I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam

I managed to read a further three of the books – The Chosen, Ancestry and The Geometer Lobachevsky – before the winner was announced.  Based on the books I read, my choice of winner would have been The Chosen. I still hope to get around to reading the two shortlisted books I haven’t read. My attempts to read all the longlisted books in previous years have ended in failure so I won’t even begin to think about trying to do that.

Have you read any of the books on the longlist or shortlist? If so, what was your favourite? And if you managed to read them all – kudos to you, if you did – do you agree with the judges’ decision?