MY FATHER’S HOUSE longlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

We are thrilled to announce that MY FATHER’S HOUSE by Joseph O’Connor has been longlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This is the second time Joseph O’Connor’s work has been recognised by the prize – with his acclaimed novel SHADOWPLAY making the shortlist in 2020.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is a prestigious literary prize celebrating quality, innovation and ambition of writing, provided the majority of the novel’s storyline is set at least sixty years ago. Previous winners include WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel and THE LONG SONG by Andrea Levy.

The other longlisted titles for this year’s prize are: THE NEW LIFE by Tom Crewe, A BETTER PLACE by Stephen Daisley, THE HOUSE OF DOORS by Tan Twan Eng, HUNGRY GHOSTS by Kevin Jared Hosein, FOR THY GREAT PAIN, HAVE MERCY ON MY LITTLE PAIN by Victoria MacKenzie, MUSIC IN THE DARK by Sally Magnusson, CUDDY by  Benjamin Myers, THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith, MISTER TIMELESS BLYTH by Alan Spence, IN THE UPPER COUNTRY by Kai Thomas, and ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER by Rose Tremain.

Katie Grant, the chair of the judging panel,  said: ‘From the epic to the intimate, from the philosophical to the swashbuckling, from the traditional to the experimental, in each book emotions run deep. If you read the whole list, just like the panel of judges, you’ll never be short of conversation.’ 

From February 2024, the prize is being managed by The Abbotsford Trust, which is responsible for Sir Walter Scott’s Borders home. With the support of The Hawthornden Foundation, and the ongoing patronage of prize founder and Abbotsford patron, the Duke of Buccleuch, the existing Walter Scott Prize team and judges will continue their work.

The shortlist will be announced in May, and the winner announcement and prize-giving event will take at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, in June.

Based on the true story of Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish priest in the Vatican who helped escaped prisoners evade capture in Nazi-occupied Rome, MY FATHER’S HOUSE is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction. Joseph O’Connor has created an unforgettable novel of love, faith and sacrifice, and what it means to be truly human in extreme circumstances.

MY FATHER’S HOUSE was first published to great acclaim in the UK and Ireland by Harvill Secker in January 2023 and in the US by Europa Editions in April 2023. Translation rights have been sold in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, and film rights are under option.

MY FATHER’S HOUSE has been a stellar success, flying straight to No.1 in Ireland upon publication, occupying the spot for four weeks and selling over 100,000 copies in the English language overall. A Waterstones’ Irish ‘Book of the Month’ for February 2024, it is longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award and last year was shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year Award at the 2023 An Post Irish Book Awards (with Joseph shortlisted for the Library Association of Ireland Author of the Year Award at the same event). Last week MY FATHER’S HOUSE was picked by Peter Kemp as a Sunday Times ‘Paperback of the Week’. 

MY FATHER’S HOUSE has been very well received in its many translation markets – most recently in France where Payot & Rivages are already onto their second reprint and publications like Les chroniques de Goliath are describing it as ‘dazzling… A fiction that dives its roots so deeply into historical truth that it becomes entirely credible.’ You can see more of the international praise below and on Joseph O’Connor’s website.

The Irish ambassadors to Italy and the Vatican have jointly organised a celebratory event at the Irish Embassy in Rome in this month which marks both the release of Harvill Secker’s paperback edition of MY FATHER’S HOUSE and Guanda’s Italian edition of LA CASA DI MIO PADRE.

Joseph is currently completing THE GHOSTS OF ROME, the second novel in the Escape Line trilogy (of which MY FATHER’S HOUSE is the first), which is due to be published by Harvill Secker in the UK and Europa in the UK in 2025.

Photo credit: Urszula Soltys

About Joseph O’Connor

Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin, where he still lives. MY FATHER’S HOUSE is his tenth novel: he is also the author of film scripts, radio and stage plays, two collections of short stories, and several bestselling works of non-fiction.

2022 was the 20th anniversary of Joseph O’Connor’s novel STAR OF THE SEA which was an international bestseller, selling more than a million copies in the UK alone and being published in 38 languages. It won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.

He holds an honorary Doctorate in Literature from University College Dublin and received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2012. He is the Inaugural Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

Praise for MY FATHER’S HOUSE

‘A gripping, compelling and utterly brilliant read.’ – Liz Nugent

‘I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a beautifully produced advance copy of Joseph's new novel. What a joy and privilege to be an early reader of a work of art from a towering figure in world literature. MY FATHER’S HOUSE is a masterwork. No writer in the world can tell a story the way Joseph O’Connor does. He can, without seeming effort, be all things to all readers, taking us by the hand and guiding us into the very heart of a story, his narrative techniques deployed with such unearthly skill that we’re hardly aware that this was written at all, it feels so real, so urgent, so incredibly alive. This novel is a searing and beautiful example of storytelling’s infinite importance, to our humanness, to our chances of learning from our most terrible and our most transcendent moments, and all our moments in between, to hold all life sacred, to see each other as brothers and sisters, to love and protect each other. No wonder he is so cherished and loved by his countless devotees across the earth. He is a national and international treasure, the most generous and noble of writers, a true master of the art.’ – Donal Ryan

‘A spectacular, thrilling novel… offering much more than tensely plotted thrills… MY FATHER’S HOUSE celebrates triumphant against-the-odds camaraderie. It would require a present-day Puccini to do operatic justice to its tremendous tale.’ – Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

‘This formidable talent for writing across genres is reflected in his masterly 10th novel, which should reap similar plaudits… This is a literary thriller of the highest order. The incarnation of O’Flaherty, the Irish Oskar Schindler, is sublime. What often elevates a writer is compassion, and O’Connor has it in spades – paying tribute to the courage of those who resist tyranny. Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. The plot twists keep on coming until the novel’s coda, where a final joyful conceit is revealed.’ – Lucy Popescu, The Observer

‘Joseph O’Connor’s historical novel MY FATHER’S HOUSE manages to be at once a ripping yarn and a profound exploration of moral choices in the worst of times… With lyrical evocation of time and place, scabrous humour and heart-stopping tension, it combines the pleasures of the ideal holiday read with those of a literary masterpiece.’ – Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times, ‘The Best Books of 2023 so far’

‘This historical thriller is a captivating page-turner.’ – ActuaLitté

‘With his new fiction, Joseph O’Connor once again reinvents the historical genre, intertwining it with elements of suspense typical of noir fiction.’ – Livres Hebdo

‘This book is a real page-turner, where compassion prevails over hatred.’ – L’Arche

‘The interwoven narrative of the protagonists’ testimonies lends a powerful momentum to this page-turner.’ – Benzine

‘In this beautifully written novel, Joseph O’Connor raises the painful question of neutrality. While the Pontiff clings to it like a mussel to its rock, the Irish priest rejects it. He didn’t don the habit to indulge in contemplation. He made a vow of obedience, but his conscience whispers disobedience to him. Do we ever truly know who we are? Only danger reveals it to us. For Hugh O’Flaherty and his choir, doubt is not allowed. Coming from all walks of life, destined never to meet in times of peace, these amateur singers have found each other to form only one audacious soul. Noble heroes on the altar of sacrifice, on the altar of humanity.’ – La Vie en Noir

Visit Joseph’s website

Anne de Courcy honoured with the Biographers’ Club Exceptional Contribution Prize

Picture credit: BookBrunch

We are delighted to announce that celebrated biographer Anne de Courcy is this year’s recipient of the Biographers’ Club Exceptional Contribution Prize, recognizing her exceptional career encompassing eleven books over the past four decades.

Anne was presented with the award at the Biographers’ Club Christmas Party on Monday (11 December 2023), held at Albany in Piccadilly, London. Club chairperson Jane Ridley remarked on Anne’s dedication to the craft across her many works, citing in particular de Courcy's ‘ground-breaking’ SNOWDON: THE BIOGRAPHY, as well as the support she has offered over the years to both aspiring and established biographers.

The Biographers’ Club was founded in 1997 to support, promote and connect literary biographers throughout the research and writing process and their careers. The Exceptional Contribution prize has been awarded by the Club annually since 2009, with Anne joining the ranks of honourees including Michael Holroyd, Selina Hastings, Claire Tomalin, Hermione Lee, and 2022 winner A.N. Wilson.

About Anne de Courcy

Anne de Courcy is a well-known writer, journalist and book reviewer. In the 1970s she was Woman’s Editor on the London Evening News until its demise in 1980, when she joined the Evening Standard as a columnist and feature-writer. In 1982 she joined the Daily Mail as a feature writer, with a special interest in historical subjects, leaving in 2003 to concentrate on books, on which she has talked widely both here and in the United States.

A critically-acclaimed and best-selling author, she believes that as well as telling the story of its subject’s life, a biography should depict the social history of the period, since so much of action and behaviour is governed not simply by obvious financial, social and physical conditions but also by underlying, often unspoken, contemporary attitudes, assumptions, standards and moral codes.

Anne sits on the committee of the Biographer’s Club, and was previously the chairperson of the group. Her recent biographies, all of which have been serialised, include THE VICEROY’S DAUGHTERS, DIANA MOSLEY, DEBS AT WAR and SNOWDON; THE BIOGRAPHY, written with the agreement and co-operation of the Earl of Snowdon. Based on Anne’s book, a Channel 4 documentary Snowdon and Margaret: Inside a Royal Marriage, was broadcast in June 2008.

THE FISHING FLEET: HUSBAND-HUNTING IN THE RAJ, was published in July 2012. Her book, MARGOT AT WAR published in November 2014, was shortlisted for the Paddy Power Political Book of the Year award. Her latest book is FIVE LOVE AFFAIRS AND A FRIENDSHIP (published in the US as MAGNIFICENT REBEL), a biography of Jazz Age icon Nancy Cunard.

Praise for Anne de Courcy

‘De Courcy paints a rich canvas.’ – The Sunday Times

‘Meticulously researched and sparklingly witty’ – Jane Shilling, Must Reads, Daily Mail

‘Anne de Courcy combines the perseverance of a social historian with the panache of the novelist’ – The Times

‘Intoxicating descriptions… meticulous detail’ – New York Times

‘She can make you laugh or break your heart, but she will never bore you.’ – Martin Rubin, The Washington Times

‘Anne de Courcy has a humorous tone, which I find very engaging, and she draws research from letters, memories and diaries.’ – Santa Montefiore, Good Housekeeping, ‘The Books That Changed My Life’

Visit Anne's website

Zakes Mda nominated for African Genius Awards

Photo credit: Sal Idriss

We are delighted that acclaimed author Zakes Mda has been nominated for the 2023 African Genius Awards.

The Awards were established in 2021 and are run by Priority Performance Projects, which is part of Plus 94 Research, a South African black-owned research company. They aim to honour exceptional Africans who espouse the values that will take the continent forward, with criteria including demonstrable contribution to problem solving, leadership and inspirational qualities, exceptional skills, outstanding contributions relevant to the community or society, and official recognition such as awards, honours and prestigious appointments.

The other nominees come from a wide range of fields and include Ameenah Gurib-Fakim (the first woman president of Mauritius), Oscar winning actress Lupita Amondi Nyong’o and Nobel Peace Prize winners Leymah Gbowee and Ouided Bouchamaoui. The full list can be found here. The three winners will be named on May 25, Africa Day, in a ceremony that will be streamed live from the University of Pretoria.

Zakes Mda’s latest novel, WAYFARER’S HYMNS was published by Umuzi in 2021 and was included in Brittle Paper’s ‘50 Notable African Books of 2021’ list.

Praise for Zakes Mda

‘A voice for which one should feel not only affection but admiration’ – The New York Times

‘Mda’s lyrical tale defies easy categorization and enters the realm of pure magic.’ – John Updike

‘Combines Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magic realism and political astuteness with satire, social realism and a critical re-examination of the South African past.’ – The New York Times Book Review

‘Lyricism, vividness and dark, tragic wit have earned the author recognition here and in his homeland.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘The great South African novelist of his generation, a writer rich in both imagination and ironic political attitude.’ – The Philadelphia Inquirer

About Zakes Mda

Zakes Mda is the pen name of Zanemvula Kizito Gatyeni Mda. He is a South African, Lesotho and Appalachian American-African writer, painter, and music composer. He holds an MFA (Theatre) and an MA (Telecommunications) from Ohio University, and a PhD from the University of Cape Town. There have been recent successful exhibitions of his work in the US and South Africa and his paintings are bought by collectors around the world.

He has published more than twenty books, ten of which are novels and the rest collections of plays, poetry and a monograph on the theory and practice of theatre-for-development. His novel CION, set in southeast Ohio, was nominated for the NAACP Image Award. His memoir SOMETIMES THERE IS A VOID: MEMOIRS OF AN OUTSIDER was published by Farrar Straus and Giroux and was a New York Times Notable Book for 2012. He has won many prestigious literary awards in South Africa.

He divides his time between the USA and South Africa. He is Professor Emeritus of English at Ohio University, lecturer in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins University and Extraordinary Professor of English at the University of the Western Cape. In South Africa he is a patron of the Market Theatre and director of the Southern African Multimedia AIDS Trust. He also runs a beekeeping project he established in 2000 with rural women of the Eastern Cape and is a director of NeoZane, a publishing house and animation film production company in Johannesburg.

Follow Zakes on Twitter.

MAY GOD FORGIVE longlisted for the 2023 Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award

We are delighted that MAY GOD FORGIVE by Alan Parks has been longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

The Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year is one of the most prestigious prizes in crime fiction in the UK. It is presented by Harrogate International Festivals and recognises the best crime novels published in the UK and Ireland in paperback.

The public are now invited to vote for the six titles to make up the shortlist: https://harrogatetheakstoncrimeaward.com/vote/

Voting closes on 18 May.

The shortlist will be announced on 15 June, when the public vote for the winner will open. The winner of the £3,000 prize will be revealed at Harrogate on 20 July, on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, which will be celebrating its 20th year.

You can watch an interview with all the longlisted authors, including Alan, here: https://harrogatetheakstoncrimeaward.com/author-interviews/

MAY GOD FORGIVE is the fifth title in Alan Parks’ highly acclaimed Harry McCoy series. It won the McIlvanney Scottish Crime Book of the Year award and was recently longlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.

After a fatal arson attack leaves tempers frayed in Glasgow, McCoy finds himself in a race against time to find the suspects before they turn up dead one by one. In 2022 MAY GOD FORGIVE was published in the UK by Canongate and in the US by Europa. The series is sold in more than ten countries around the world and the paperback is out in the UK today, on 27 April. The next book in the series, TO DIE IN JUNE, will be released in the UK next month.

Praise for MAY GOD FORGIVE

‘MAY GOD FORGIVE is the fifth instalment in a remarkable series that began with BLOODY JANUARY. The novels, as someone once said, can be read in any order; the important thing is to read them all.’ – Mark Sanderson, The Times

‘MAY GOD FORGIVE is a bleak and violent book, full of grisly details not for the squeamish, but also tenderness, poignance and hard-earned wisdom.’ – Tom Nolan, The Wall Street Journal

‘Noir has long been the dominant colour in the palette of such Scottish writers as Ian Rankin and Denise Mina, but Parks manages to find a deeper shade of black, only slightly attenuated by Harry's willingness to go far off the grid to extract a wee bit of justice. A must for those who take their noir straight, no chaser; others should keep the Pepto handy.’ – Bill Ott, Booklist

‘Enjoyably readable… Parks is a gifted story-teller’ – Allan Massie, The Scotsman

‘Harry McCoy is the brightest dark star on the Tartan Noir scene for some time and in future critics of Scottish crime fiction will surely be referring to the triumvirate of Laidlaw, Rebus and McCoy … MAY GOD FORGIVE is crime fiction which pulls no punches, powerfully told and, at times, heartbreakingly poignant. One of the crime novels of 2022.’ – Mike Ripley, Getting Away With Murder

About Alan Parks

Photo: Euan Robertson

Alan Parks was Creative Director at London Records in the mid 1990’s, then at Warner Music, where he created ground-breaking campaigns for artists including All Saints, New Order, The Streets, Gnarls Barclay and Cee Lo Green. He was also Managing Director of 679 Recordings, a joint venture with Warner Music. His debut novel BLOODY JANUARY propelled him onto the international literary crime fiction scene immediately and his work has been hailed by contemporary writers and critics alike.

BLOODY JANUARY was shortlisted for the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière, FEBRUARY’S SON was nominated for an Edgar Award, BOBBY MARCH WILL LIVE FOREVER was picked as a Times Best Book of the Year, won an Edgar Award and has been shortlisted for the Macavity Award for Best Mystery novel, and THE APRIL DEAD was shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year.

Alan was born in Scotland and attended The University of Glasgow where he was awarded a M.A. in Moral Philosophy. He still lives and works in the city that is so vividly depicted in the 1970s setting of his Harry McCoy thrillers.

Visit Alan’s website

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TIEPOLO BLUE by James Cahill on Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award longlist

We are delighted that TIEPOLO BLUE by James Cahill has been longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award.

The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award was established in 1954, making it the longest-running UK prize for debut fiction and, except for the James Tait Black and the Hawthornden, the oldest literary prize in Britain. Past winners include Gail Honeyman, Jackie Kay and the late Gilbert Adair, also a Blake Friedmann client.

The other titles on this year’s longlist are: TO FILL A YELLOW HOUSE by Sussie Anie, THE DICTATOR’S WIFE by Freya Berry, MY NAME IS YIP by Paddy Crewe, EDGWARE ROAD by Yasmin Cordery-Khan, LITTLE BOXES by Cecilia Knapp, WHEN WE WERE BIRDS by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, BLACK BUTTERFLIES by Priscilla Morris, I’M A FAN by Sheena Patel, MOONLIGHT AND THE PEARLER’S DAUGHTER by Lizzie Pook, THE WHALEBONE THEATRE by Joanna Quinn and NO COUNTRY FOR GIRLS by Emma Styles.

Lucy Popescu, the chair of the judging panel, said: ‘We are delighted to announce our longlist of 12 debut novelists tackling a fascinating diversity of subjects. These compelling novels explore art and privilege, war, loss, blackmail and theft as well as love, desire, obsession and the pursuit of power. We visit several UK locations and are transported to the American frontier, Australia, Trinidad, Eastern Europe and the siege of Sarajevo.’

The shortlist for this year’s prize will be announced on 20 March, with the winner being revealed at the National Liberal Club on 24 May.

TIEPOLO BLUE follows the unravelling of revered art historian Donald Lamb. Freed from the constraints of academia, it looks like the anarchic contemporary art scene of 1990s London might be his salvation, but he soon suffers an earth-shattering fall from grace that leaves him questioning everyone and everything.

TIEPOLO BLUE was published in hardback by Sceptre in June 2022 to great acclaim. It attracted widespread praise, including from Patrick Gale and Stephen Fry (the latter describing it as ‘The best novel I have read for ages’), and was also included in the BBC’s and Times Literary Supplement’s ‘Best of 2022’ lists. It will be published in paperback on 27 April 2023.

James is currently writing his second novel, THE VIOLET HOUR, which will be published in hardback by Sceptre in Summer 2024. Set in New York, London and Switzerland, the novel reveals the secret history of a reclusive artist, a monomaniacal collector, and the art dealer caught between them.

Praise for TIEPOLO BLUE

‘The spirit of E.M. Forster is alive and well in James Cahill. The same palpating of damaged moral tissue, the same psychological canniness, the same gently invoked erudition, the same exactitude and eloquence – except Cahill is able to explore forbidden themes that Forster feared to touch on except posthumously’ – Edmund White

‘The best novel I have read for ages. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read… There is so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in.’ – Stephen Fry

‘Imagine if Hollinghurst and Murdoch collaborated on a witty update of DEATH IN VENICE and you'll see the appeal of James Cahill's assured debut.’ – Patrick Gale

‘The last debut novel I read that had this much talent buzzing around inside it was Alan Hollinghurst’s THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY.’ – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

‘Beautifully captures disorientation, tenderness and heat without tipping into excess…an electric new novel written by an author skilled in the evocation of vertiginous, heightened emotion.’ – Michael Donkor, The Guardian, ‘Book of the Day’

‘The plot is propulsive, though the crafted ambience of unease simultaneously destabilizes the reader at every turn. The prose is fluid and precise but the tone equivocal, bathos merging into pathos, tragedy into farce and back again… Oscar Wilde’s paradoxes – about the relationship between art and life, illusion and reality, true and false selves – lie half submerged throughout this bravura debut, but so does the vulnerability of Thomas Mann’s Gustav von Aschenbach… It is the moments when rawness and confusion burst to the surface that prevent this witty yet unnerving book from being too clever.’ – Lucasta Miller, Times Literary Supplement

About James Cahill

Picture Credit: Darren Wheeler

James Cahill was born in London. Over the past decade, he has worked in the art world and academia, combining writing and research with a role at a leading contemporary art gallery.

His writing on art has appeared in publications including The Burlington Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The London Review of Books. He was the lead author and consulting editor of FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (Phaidon, 2018), a survey of classical myth in art from antiquity to the present day. He was the co-curator of ‘The Classical Now’, an exhibition at King’s College London (March-April 2018), examining the relationships between ancient, modern and contemporary art.

He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King’s College London.

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