Tag: literary prizes

The winner of The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024 was announced this evening at the Borders Book Festival – Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein. Many congratulations to Kevin and Bloomsbury Books.

As every year, the shortlist was a varied array of brilliant historical fiction. I read five of the six books, In The Upper Country by Kai Thomas being the one I ran out of time to read. I intend to put that right soon. The other shortisted books were:

The New Life by Tom Crewe
My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor
In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas
Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

If you managed to read any of the books on the shortlist – or indeed the whole shortlist – did the judges pick the right book?

The shortlist for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024 was announced this morning, 1st May 2024. Congratulations to the authors and publishers of the shortlisted books. Some fantastic books have made it through to this final stage.

I ventured to predict the books that would make the shortlist but only got two right. On a brighter note, there are only two of the six I haven’t read – Absolutely & Forever and In the Upper Country – which makes it much more likely I’ll have read the entire shortlist before the winner is announced at the Borders Book Festival on Thursday 13^th June 2024. I might even chance another prediction…

So without further ado, here are the books on the shortlist. Links from the titles will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

The New Life by Tom Crewe
Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein
My Father’s House by Joseph O’Connor
In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas
Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain
The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng

Have you read any of the books on the list? Are there any you’re planning to read? Is there a book you’d like to see win?