The Desmond Elliott Prize 2012 Shortlist

 The Prize for New Fiction - 2012 SHORTLIST 

The Desmond Elliott Prize shortlist of three first novels is announced today, Thursday 24 May 2012. The Prize celebrates the very best of debut fiction by the rising stars of the literary world.

The shortlist for The Desmond Elliott Prize 2012 is as follows:

• The Land Of Decoration by Grace McCleen (Chatto & Windus)
• The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness (Seren)
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (Doubleday)   

This year’s shortlist has been selected from a longlist of ten, announced in April. The three shortlisted authors are: poet and academic Patrick McGuinness, whose novel The Last Hundred Days was inspired by his years in Bucharest in the lead up to the Romanian revolution; award-winning radio playwright Rachel Joyce, whose book The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was originally drafted as a radio play for her dying father, and Grace McCleen with The Land Of Decoration, a story based on the author’s own upbringing in a Christian fundamentalist sect in Wales.

The judges were struck by the strong characters and coruscating language of Patrick McGuinness’ dystopian novel about the last days of the Ceauscescu dictatorship in Romania, Rachel Joyce’s beautiful storytelling, with its insights into human nature through the tale of an ordinary person motivated to perform extraordinary actions, and the original language and ideas in Grace McCleen’s vivid and life-affirming story of a young girl in a Christian sect who believes the Last Days have come. 

Sam Llewellyn, 2012 Chair of Judges and one of Desmond Elliott’s own protégés, commented:

‘It has been extraordinarily hard to choose a shortlist of three from such a powerful and diverse longlist. Desmond Elliott once told me that his ideal novel was a cross between a treasure hunt and a race. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is both these things, and a lot more besides. The Last Hundred Days, written with wit and irony, is a really fine and original addition to the literature of disintegrating empires, and The Land of Decoration is unlike anything you’ve ever read. It’s a rollercoaster of a book that makes the reader laugh and cry at entirely unpredictable intervals.’

Sam Llewellyn is joined on the judging panel by Tom Gatti, Editor of The Times Review section, and Caroline Mileham, Head of Books at Play.com.

William Hill spokesman, Graham Sharpe, commented that ‘despite having dramatically varying themes, it is very difficult to differentiate between three brilliant debut novels’, but gave Rachel Joyce a narrow lead with the following odds:

• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce - 5/4
• The Last Hundred Days by Patrick McGuinness - 7/4
• The Land Of Decoration by Grace McCleen - 2/1

The winner will be announced on Thursday 28 June at Fortnum & Mason, London.  When choosing a winner, the judges will be looking for a novel of depth and breadth with a compelling narrative. The work should be vividly written and confidently realised and should contain original and arresting characters.

The 2011 winner was Anjali Joseph for Saraswati Park, published by Fourth Estate. Previous winners of the Prize were: The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw (Atlantic Books, 2010); Blackmoor by Edward Hogan (Simon & Schuster, 2009) and Gifted by Nikita Lalwani (Penguin Books, 2008).

www.desmondelliottprize.com