WHITE ROAD – the ‘spellbinding’ arctic-set ecothriller by Harry Whitehead – has been longlisted for the tenth Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize, awarded by The Wilbur & Niso Smith Foundation. The award celebrates the very best in paperback books, across a number of genres, ‘where adventure can be found’, in the spirit of the award’s co-founder, the late international-bestselling author Wilbur Smith.
WHITE ROAD – the thrilling, unforgettable story of two survivors of a devastating oil rig explosion in the high arctic, and the mystery behind the catastrophe – was published in September 2025 by indie publisher Claret Press, and audiobook publisher WF Howes, gaining plaudits from Liz Jensen, Mark Cocker and Eve Smith, who named the book one of her favourite reads of 2025 in the Daily Express.
‘It feels fortuitous to be celebrating a decade of adventure fiction in the National Year of Reading,’ said Niso Smith, prize founder, on the announcement of the longlist. ‘Adventure stories are a gateway into reading for both children and adults, but they can also offer devoted readers something new – as this expansive longlist does! Wilbur Smith shared over 60 years of his adventures with the world and now we’re proudly working with readers to celebrate and support the contemporary writers who are redefining the genre. The focus on paperback will allow us to bring adventure stories to even more readers, and to do so with such accomplished books is incredibly exciting. Congratulations to each of the authors!’
The shortlist will be announced on Thursday 28 May, and the winner will be announced at a reception at Foyles’ flagship Charing Cross Road bookshop on 17 September, with the victor taking home the trophy and a £10,000 prize. Previous winners include Costanza Casati, Francesca de Torres, Emma Styles, Abir Mukherjee and Stef Penney.
Congratulations Harry!
About WHITE ROAD
‘An intelligent, urgent, white-knuckle ride… a novel that will get you thinking, keep you guessing – and leave you reeling.’ – Liz Jensen
‘A compelling eco-thriller with big themes and an unforgiving icescape that’s a character in itself.’ – Eve Smith
‘A spellbinding adventure story, told with anger, wit and a sense of beauty.’ – Mat Coward, Morning Star
Only one knows the truth. Only one can reveal it. Only one can save them all…
Carrie, a Scottish rescue swimmer out of her depth in the High Arctic. Ross, the owner of an oil rig with a guilty conscience. Amaruq, an Inuvialuit oil-rig worker caught between two worlds.
Stranded on the Arctic ice with a starving polar bear and a half-dead stranger, Carrie’s left with nothing but deadly choices. Ross and Amaruq face their own crossroads. Lives hang on their decisions.
From the cruel Arctic to the corporate backrooms of shady Big Oil, WHITE ROAD is an authentic and gripping eco-thriller of survival, battled out at the edge of everything.
About Harry Whitehead
Harry Whitehead is a novelist and Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Leicester, where he directs the annual free literature festival, Literary Leicester. He has been a Wingate Scholar and an Eccles Centre Fellow in North American Studies at the British Library. Before academia, he lived for several years in the Far East before returning to the UK to work in the film business as an assistant director, location manager and, latterly, a story consultant.
His debut novel, THE CANNIBAL SPIRIT (Penguin Canada) is a work of literary historical fiction set among the First Peoples of Canada at the turn of the twentieth century. The product of some fifteen years of historical and ethnographic research, it was reviewed as ‘powerful, brave, ambitious’ (The Globe and Mail), ‘a thriller with a Joseph Conradian plot’ (The Walrus), ‘a unique work, compelling, complex, thought-provoking and impressive’ (Quill and Quire).
His second novel, WHITE ROAD, a literary thriller set in the High Arctic, was published in September 2025 by Claret Press and WF Howes.
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