The Desmond Elliott Prize 2011 - LONGLIST ANNOUNCED

The Prize for New Fiction

http://www.desmondelliottprize.org/

• A magazine editor, a film director and an award-winning journalist turn their creativity to fiction

• One contender blossoms from redundant administrator to publishers’ darling

• London’s real-life dramas inspire some capital fiction

• Historical and international settings distinguish this richly varied list

• Diverse coming-of-age experiences range from hip-hop in Harrow to teenage militancy in Kashmir

The longlist for The Desmond Elliott Prize 2011, the award for a first novel published in the UK, is announced today, Tuesday 19 April 2011.

The 10 writers longlisted for the prize include former commissioning editor of ELLE magazine (India) Anjali Joseph, critically acclaimed short film director Tom Connolly, award-winning journalist Leo Benedictus and city lawyer Jonathan Lee.

Stephen Kelman whose cult novel Pigeon English has been longlisted for the Prize was unemployed when he secured his publishing deal with Bloomsbury. In his debut book, he draws on his own experiences of growing up on a council estate in London and explores themes of gang culture, immigration and inner city life. Stephen Kelman is one of seven of the longlisted authors based in London and the city features in a further three novels on the longlist.

The Desmond Elliott Prize 2011 longlist:

• The Afterparty by Leo Benidictus (Jonathan Cape)
• Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman (Sceptre)
 Coconut Unlimited by Nikesh Shukla (Quartet) • The Collaborator by Mirza Waheed (Viking)

• Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman (Bloomsbury)
• Pub Walks in Underhill Country by Nat Segnit (Fig Tree)
• Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph (Fourth Estate)
• The Spider Truces by Tom Connolly (Myriad Editions)
• A Vision of Loveliness by Louise Levene (Bloomsbury)
• Who is Mr Satoshi? by Jonathan Lee (William Heinemann)

The longlist features a broad range of historical and international settings including Germany in the 1930s in Ned Beauman’s Boxer Beetle, London in the 1950s in Louise Levene’s A Vision of Loveliness, Kent in the 1980s in Tom Connolly’s The Spider Truces, Kashmir in the 1990s in Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator, Harrow in the 1990s in Nikesh Shukla’s Coconut Unlimited, present-day Japan in Jonathan Lee’s Who is Mr Satoshi? and contemporary Bombay in Anjali Joseph’s Saraswati Park.

Contrasting accounts of coming of age distinguish several of this year’s longlisted books. In Coconut Unlimited, Nikesh Shukla follows the trials of three hip-hop obsessed Asian boys at their all-white private school in Harrow. In Pigeon English, Stephen Kelman uncovers tricks for urban survival such as how to draw on your own Adidas stripes in marker pen. In 1980s Kent, Ellis O’Rourke deals with death, drugs and spiders in Tom Connolly’s The Spider Truces and, 1990s Kashmir, four teenage boys confront the violence of war in Mirza Waheed’s The Collaborator.

Acclaimed broadcaster and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Show Edward Stourton chairs this year’s panel of judges and is joined by Fanny Blake, journalist, writer and Books Editor of Woman&Home magazine, and Amy Worth, part of the Kindle team at Amazon.co.uk and champion of digital publishing.

The Prize was inaugurated in honour of publisher and literary agent Desmond Elliott, one of the most charismatic and successful men in this field, who died in August 2003. He stipulated that his estate should be invested in a charitable trust that would fund a literary award “to enrich the careers of new writers”. Worth £10,000 to the winner, the Prize is intended to support new writers and to celebrate their fiction.

A shortlist of three books will be announced on Wednesday 25 May. When narrowing the list to a shortlist of three books, 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. Entries have been considered from all fiction genres.

The winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize 2011 will be announced on Thursday 23 June at Fortnum & Mason, Desmond’s ‘local grocer’, in London.