THE novel at the centre of a literary prize row is in now in the running for the UK’s oldest book prize.
Edinburgh-based Lucy Ellmann is amongst the four writers shortlisted for the James Tait Black fiction prize for her work Ducks, Newburyport.
The stream of consciousness narrative reveals the inner life of its female protagonist over 1000 pages in just one sentence.
The novel has already won awards, and was in December at the heart of a storm around the Saltire Society’s literary gongs after one judge, who had backed it for the win, claimed other panellists had failed to finish the book before giving the accolade to another.
That was denied by the Saltire Society, but Ellmann’s publisher Sam Jordison, of Galley Beggar Press, called the situation “an awful mess”.
Now the work has been named one of the best of 2019 by the James Tait Black Prizes team, which has also shortlisted refugee tale Travellers by Nigeria’s Helon Habila, Girl by Ireland’s Edna O’Brien, about a youngster abducted by Boko Haram, and Sudden Traveller by England’s Sarah Hall, formerly of St Andrews University.
The winner of the £10,000 honour will be revealed in August, as will the result of its biography category.
That shortlist includes a poet’s-eye view of war in El Salvador, and a debut collection of essays about the body, grief and motherhood, plus a study of a group of young black women in early twentieth century America and a memoir by the child of a Holocaust survivor.
The news will be announced at in an online event as part of this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival, which has moved to the web due to the pandemic.
Fiction judge Dr Benjamin Bateman said the works “supply nourishing forms of travel” around the world “into the thoughts of compelling characters”.
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