London Triptych wins Authors Club prize

The Bookseller - 18.04.11 - Lisa Campbell

The Authors’ Club Best First Novel award has been given to Jonathan Kemp for London Triptych.

The book, about sex, exploitation and prostitution set against London’s gay underworld was published by Brighton-based indie Myriad Editions in 2010.

Kemp fought off competition from the Orange Prize-shortlisted Grace Williams Says It Loud, the Costa First Novel Award winner Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai and Amy Sackville’s Orange-longlisted The Still Point to claim the £2,500 prize.

Chocolat author Joanne Harris, guest adjudicator for the prize, said London Triptych had “astonishingly textured prose [and] wonderfully defined narrative voices”.

Myriad will publish Jonathan Kemp’s second novel, Twentysix, in November and a third novel, Hannah Rose, in 2012.

The annual Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award, established in 1955, is presented to the most promising debut novel first published in Britain during the previous year.