Waterstone's New Writer of the Year
Shortlisted Titles
| Book Title | Author | Imprint |
|---|---|---|
| Tom Rob Smith | for Child 44 | Simon & Schuster |
| Jennie Rooney | for Inside the Whale | Vintage |
| Nancy Horan | for Loving Frank | Sceptre |
| Farahad Zama | for The Marriage Bureau For Rich People | Abacus |
| Hillary Jordan | for Mudbound | Windmill |
| Melissa Benn | for One of Us | Vintage |
About the authors
-
Tom Rob Smith for Child 44
Tom Rob Smith was born in l979 to a Swedish mother and an English father and was brought up in London where he still lives. He graduated from Cambridge in 2001 and spent a year in Italy on a creative writing scholarship. He has worked as a screenwriter for the past five years, including a six-month stint in Phnom Penh storylining Cambodia’s first ever soap. Child 44 is his first novel. Already it is to be adapted for a major movie, directed by Ridley Scott.
Simon & Schuster -
Jennie Rooney for Inside the Whale
Twenty-eight year-old Jennie Rooney was working as a commercial lawyer when she started to write her first novel in her lunch breaks. Inside the Whale is a heart-warming, tender and funny tale of two lovers who look back on their lives shaped by the War, a love story of thwarted circumstances, and the wisdom that comes of decades of silence.
Vintage -
Nancy Horan for Loving Frank
Nancy Horan has produced an ambitious debut novel about the clandestine love affair between Mamah Borthwick Cheney and America's greatest architect Frank Lloyd Wrigh. Horan blends fact and fiction brilliantly. Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual.
Read an Extract
Launch Video Sceptre -
Farahad Zama for The Marriage Bureau For Rich People
Farahad Zama moved to London in 1990 from Vizag in India, where the novel is set. A colourful coastal town and contemporary marriage bureau prove a perfect backdrop for a splendid array of characters making sense of all sorts of pride and prejudice - and the ways in which true love won’t quite let go - in this witty and big-hearted debut novel. Zama is a father of two, and he works for an investment bank.
Abacus -
Hillary Jordan for Mudbound
Hillary Jordan grew up in Texas and Oklahoma and received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Mudbound is her first novel, and it's the winner of the Bellwether Prize, founded to recognise literature of social responsibility. Hillary grew up hearing thrilling and humorous stories of her grandmother's experiences of survival on a remote farm in the Deep South, and was finally inspired to write about them while at university. She now lives in Tivoli, New York.
Windmill -
Melissa Benn for One of Us
Melissa Benn is a writer, journalist and campaigner, and a member of one of Britain's best known political families. She has written one previous novel, Public Lives (1995), which reviewers praised for its "acute intelligence" and "incredible subtlety". Benn writes regularly for the Guardian and other national publications, and her non-fiction includes Madonna and Child: Towards a New Politics of Motherhood (1998). She lives in north-west London with her husband and two daughters.
Vintage