We are delighted that OXBLOOD by Tom Benn and CASE STUDY by Graeme Macrae Burnet have been longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, selected by judges Jonathan Liew, Denise Mina, Stuart Maconie, Heather Phillipson and Chitra Ramaswamy.
Also longlisted are Free by Lea Ypi, Companion Piece by Ali Smith, Your Show by Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Scary Monsters by Michelle de Kretser, About A Son by David Whitehouse, Aftermath by Preti Taneja, Constructing a Nervous System by Margo Jefferson, Keeping the House by Tice Cin, The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers and Wayward by Vashti Bunyan.
Founded in 2012, the Gordon Burn Prize covers both fiction and non-fiction, and seeks to award works that push boundaries, cross genres or otherwise challenge readers’ expectations. It remembers the Newcastle-born writer Gordon Burn, a journalist and author of 10 books including Alma Cogan and Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son. Past winners include A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance by Hanif Abdurraqib, This Is Not Propaganda by Peter Pomerantsey, For The Good Times by David Keenan, The Long Drop by Denise Mina and In Plain Sight: The Life and Lies of Jimmy Savile by Dan Davies.
The 2022 shortlist will be announced in August. The winner will be announced at Durham Book Festival on Thursday 13 October 2022. The winner will receive a £5,000 award and a three-month retreat at Gordon Burn’s cottage in the Scottish borders.
OXBLOOD by Tom Benn
‘One of the most powerful and urgent writers of our times.’ — David Peace
‘Powerful and so beautifully written – like David Peace wrote Alan Warner’s The Sopranos and so lyrical, too.’ – Harriet Tyce
‘Reading OXBLOOD is a compelling and deeply unsettling experience; this is a novel that glitters with the dark energy and lifeblood of its characters’ – Naomi Booth
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Wythenshawe, South Manchester. 1985.
The Dodds family once ruled Manchester’s underworld; now the men are dead, leaving three generations of women trapped in a house haunted by violence, harbouring an unregistered baby.
Matriarch Nedra presides over the household, which bustles with activity as she prepares the welcome feast for her grandson Kelly’s return from prison.
Her grieving daughter-in-law Carol is visited by both the welcome intimate ghost of her murdered lover, and by Mac, an ageing criminal enforcer, a man who may just offer her a real and possible future.
And then there is Jan—the teenage tearaway running as fast as she can from her mother, her grandmother and her own unnamed baby.
Over the course of a few days, the Dodds women must each confront the true legacy of the men who have defined their lives, and seize the opportunity to break the cycle for good.
A blistering portrait of a family on fire, Oxblood lays bare the horror of violence, the exile of grief and the extraordinary power of love.
About Tom Benn
Tom Benn is an author, screenwriter and lecturer from Stockport, England. His first novel, THE DOLL PRINCESS (Cape), was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Portico Prize, longlisted for the CWA’s John Creasey Dagger, and a The Daily Mirror Book of the Week. His other novels are CHAMBER MUSIC (Cape) and TROUBLE MAN (Cape). He won runner-up prize in the 2019 International Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction, and his creative nonfiction has appeared in The Paris Review Daily. He won the BFI’s iWrite scheme for emerging screenwriters. His first film, ‘Real Gods Require Blood’, premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, and was nominated for Best Short Film at the BFI London Film Festival.
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CASE STUDY by Graeme Macrae Burnet
‘A novel of mind-bending brilliance.’ – Hannah Kent
‘A thrilling investigation into sanity and identity.’ – Alice O’Keeffe, The Bookseller
‘Fun and funny, sly and serious, a beguiling literary game that manages to say more about the nature of the self than any number of more self-consciously solemn works.’ – David Szalay
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I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.
London, 1965. An unworldly young woman suspects charismatic psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite of involvement in a death in her family. Determined to find out more, she becomes a client of his under a false identity. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything.
In CASE STUDY, Graeme Macrae Burnet presents both sides: the woman’s notes and the life of Collins Braithwaite. The result is a dazzling, page-turning and wickedly humorous meditation on the nature of sanity, identity and truth itself, by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.
About Graeme Macrae Burnet
Graeme Macrae Burnet was brought up Kilmarnock, Ayrshire and now lives in Glasgow. He has also lived in the Czech Republic, France, Portugal and London. He has appeared at festivals and events in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Russia, Estonia, Macau, Ireland, Germany and France, as well as in the UK.
His first novel, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ADÈLE BEDEAU (Contraband, 2014), received a New Writer’s Award from the Scottish Book Trust and was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award. A second Inspector Gorski novel, THE ACCIDENT ON THE A35, was published in 2017.
HIS BLOODY PROJECT (Contraband, 2015) won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and the LA Times Book Awards. It has been published to great acclaim around the world and film rights have been optioned by Synchronicity.
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