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The Desmond Elliott Prize 2010 Longlist Announced

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

  

 
  • Those at the top of their profession turn to fiction: an advertising guru, an acclaimed poet and an Oxford academic in contention
  • Novels reflect global background of the writers with stories set in countries ranging from China to Nigeria
  • Five of ten longlisted books come from independent publishers
 
The longlist for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2010, the award for a first novel published in the UK, is announced today, Wednesday 14 April, 2010.
 
The writers longlisted for the prize include high-profile advertising guru David Abbott, acclaimed poet Jacob Polley and critic and academic Matthew Reynolds. Several of the books in contention reflect the colourful travels of the writers who have lived in countries across the globe, from Nigeria to Hong Kong, France to China. All the writers now live in the UK, but many have drawn on their experiences of living abroad.
 
The Desmond Elliott Prize 2010 longlist is as follows:
 
  • The Upright Piano Player by David Abbott (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
  • Before the Earthquake by Maria Allen (Tindal Street Press)
  • The Hungry Ghostsby Anne Berry (Blue Door)
  • Rupture by Simon Lelic (Picador)
  • The Shadow of a Smileby Kachi A. Ozumba (Alma Books)
  • Talk of the Town by Jacob Polley (Picador)
  • The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
  • Designs for a Happy Home by Matthew Reynolds (Bloomsbury)
  • Beauty by Raphael Selbourne (Tindal Street Press)
  • The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw (Atlantic Books)
The longlisted books span the globe taking the reader from the prisons of Nigeria to colonial unrest in Hong Kong. Maria Allen, who spent much of her life living in Italy set her novel in southern Italy, and Anne Berry who moved to Hong Kong at the age of six, has the Japanese occupied Hong Kong of 1942 as the backdrop for her story.    
 
Crime and punishment feature strongly in the longlisted books, particularly in Matthew Reynolds’ The Shadow of a Smile; Simon Lelic’s Rupture; Raphael Selbourne’s Beauty; Jacob Polley’s Talk of the Town and David Abbott’s The Upright Piano Player.
 
Of the ten contenders there are two women and eight men, and five of this year’s ten books come from independent publishing houses.
 
Acclaimed author and journalist Elizabeth Buchan chairs this year’s panel of judges and is joined by James Daunt, founder of Daunt Books, London’s independent bookselling chain, and William Skidelsky, Literary Editor ofthe Observer.
 
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 26 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 2010 Desmond Elliott Prize will be announced on Wednesday 23 June at Fortnum & Mason, Desmond’s ‘local grocer’, in London. 
 
 
- ends -
 
 
Notes to editors
 
  • The Judges of the Desmond Elliott Prize are available for interview. Please contact Colman Getty
 
  • The longlisted authors may be available for interview. Please contact Colman Getty
 
  • Images of the longlisted books, judges and the Prize logo are available from Colman Getty
 
  • The Desmond Elliott Charitable Trust is a registered charity. It is chaired by Dallas Manderson, Group Sales Director of the Orion Publishing Group. He is joined by Christine Berry,a partner in the charities group at Taylor Vinters, a Cambridge-based law firm, and Liz Thomson, Editor of BookBrunch. Both Dallas and Christine worked with Desmond Elliott at Arlington Books
 
 
 
For further information please contact
Caroline Brown or Mark Hutchinson
at Colman Getty
T: 020 7631 2666
E: caroline@colmangetty.co.uk
 
 
The Desmond Elliott Prize 2010 Longlist
 
 
The Upright Piano Player by David Abbott (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
 
Henry Cage seemed to have it all: a successful business career, considerable wealth, and a reputation for being a just and principled man. But public virtues can conceal private failings and, as he faces retirement, his well-ordered life begins to unravel.
 
On the eve of the new millennium, Henry is the victim of a random act of violence which escalates into a prolonged persecution, with tragic consequences. Family secrets are revealed and, when his ex-wife Nessa summons him to Palm Beach, he realises that there is less time to redress the mistakes of the past. 
 
David Abbott began his career as an advertising copywriter and went on to found one of the UK's outstanding advertising agencies, Abbott Mead Vickers. He is widely recognized as one of the industry's most deservedly celebrated creative directors. This book, many years in the making, is his first novel.
 
 
Before the Earthquake by Maria Allen (Tindal Street Press)
 
At the turn of the last century, the Salierno family make a tough living as farmers in mountainous terrain in southern Italy. Then an earthquake devastates their village, destroying homes and taking lives. Concetta, their fifteen-year-old daughter, is seriously injured and, on waking from a coma, can’t remember anything in the weeks before the disaster. When she discovers she is pregnant, her family marry her off to neighbours who owe a debt of honour.
 
For her family, this story is over, but for Concetta it is only the beginning. She sets out to discover the identity of her child’s father and solve the mystery of what happened in those hidden weeks before the earthquake.
 
Maria Allen is half Italian, half English and has lived in different parts of Italy and the USA. She has worked as a journalist, in TV research, publishing and most recently in teaching. She lives in Loughborough.
 
The Hungry Ghostsby Anne Berry (Blue Door)
Raped, then murdered, in Japanese-occupied Hong Kong, 1942, Lin Shui’s ‘Hungry Ghost’ clings tenaciously to life. Just in time she finds a host off whom to feed, twelve-year-old Alice Stafford, troubled daughter of a leading government figure. The parasitic ghost follows her home to The Peak. There, entangled in the Safford family’s web of dark secrets and desperate lies, the lethal mix of the two unleashes chaos. All this unfolds against a background of colonial unrest and the countdown of the return of Hong Kong to China.
As successive tragedies engulf Alice, her ghostly entourage expands. She flees, in a bid to escape the past, only to find her ‘Hungry Ghosts’ have accompanied her. It seems the peace she longs for is to prove far more elusive than she could ever have imagined.
Anne Berry was born in London in 1956 and then moved to Hong Kong at the age of six. Following her education there, she worked at the South China Morning Post for a short period, before returning to Britain. A career in theatre followed and Anne has since set up a small drama school in the village of Bookham. She is married and has four children.
 
Rupture by Simon Lelic (Picador)
 
North London; in the depths of a sweltering summer, teacher Samuel Szajkowski walks into a school assembly and opens fire. Three pupils and a teacher are shot dead before Samuel turns the gun on himself. As the only woman in her office at CID, Detective Inspector Lucia May is finding it difficult to be taken seriously by her colleagues. When she is assigned the school-murders case, she is expected to tie things up quickly and without fuss. The incident is a tragedy that couldn’t have been predicted and Szajkowski a psychopath beyond help. But as Lucia begins to piece together the testimonies of teachers and pupils, a much more complex picture of the months leading up to the incident begins to emerge…
 
Simon Lelic has worked as a journalist and currently runs his own business. He was born in Brighton in 1976 and recently returned with his family to live there.
 
 
The Shadow of a Smileby Kachi A. Ozumba (Alma Books)
Torn from his father and a loving sister, the young student Zuba is imprisoned for a crime he has not even thought about committing. His misfortune: to live in a world where corruption is rife and honest, law-abiding people are crushed by the wheels of a blind, unscrupulous bureaucracy. What seems at first to be an irksome judiciary misunderstanding gradually becomes a journey through the hell of Nigerian prisons. Only by showing the utmost daring and integrity will Zuba be able to regain his freedom.
Kachi A. Ozumba was born in Nigeria in 1972. He is a winner of the Art Council England’s Decibel Penguin Short Story Prize. His stories have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and appeared in many journals and anthologies. He lives in Newcastle.
 
 
Talk of the Town by Jacob Polley (Picador)
 
1986, the last day of the summer holidays, and Christopher Hearsey is wondering why his best mate Arthur has suddenly disappeared, and whether lippy Gill Ross a few doors down might know anything about it. The great border city of Carlisle is buzzing with rumours following an act of terrible violence, and in order to begin his search Chris must face down his own dread, not only of the consequences of his own actions but of local man Booby Grove and his psychotic sidekick Carl ‘the black’ Hole, who is keen to settle an old score.
 
 Jacob Polley was born in Carlisle in 1975. Picador published his first book of poetry, The Brink, in 2003 and his second, Little Gods, in 2006. As well as poems, Jacob also wrote the short film Flickerman and the Ivory-skinned Woman with the director, Ian Fenton. Jacob was selected as one of the Next Generation of British Poets in 2004. In 2002, he won an Eric Gregory Award and the Radio 4/ Arts Council ‘First Verse’ Award.
 
 
The Breaking of Eggs by Jim Powell (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
 
Meet Feliks Zhukowski, a Pole in Paris and a hangover from another age. Decades back, he chose politics over people and ideas over love. Feliks’ life’s work is a travel guide to the old Eastern bloc. His personal life is a series of failures. Unfortunately for him, it’s 1991, Communism has collapsed and, at 61, his travel-writing days are numbered. So he decides to sell his guide. This sets in motion a series of life-changing events: he’ll meet the brother he hasn’t seen in fifty years, learn the truth about the mother he thought abandoned him, and get a second chance with a long-lost love. But, after five decades of misunderstanding, can he start his life afresh – and finally learn that you shouldn’t cook like Stalin?
 
Jim Powellwas born in London in 1949 and was educated at Cambridge. His first career was in advertising, becoming Managing Director of a major London agency. He then started a pottery, producing hand-painted tableware for leading stores. He was previously active in politics, contesting the 1987 Election and collaborating with former Foreign Secretary Francis Pym on his book The Politics of Consent. He lives in Northamptonshire.
 
 
Designs for a Happy Home by Matthew Reynolds (Bloomsbury)
 
Can interior design make you a better person? Alizia Tamé™ believes it can. Everyone has heard of her creations: now you can experience the life that lies behind them. Meet her husband Jem – the postmodern potter – and in many ways her inspiration. Share the thrills and anxieties of juggling family and career. Discover the truth about her partnership with Fisher Paul and Simon Sanders at IntArchitec, the world’s most innovative Design practice. Remember that when your world flips upside-down it is sometimes the most surprising people who turn out to be your friends.
 
For, while Alizia has a Design for everything from relationships to work to motherhood, the people who matter most to her refuse to fit in. As the gloss she has put on her life begins to crack, she realizes there may not be, after all, a Magic Motto for everything. And where can she find happiness then? 
 
Matthew Reynolds is known as a critic and scholar, author of The Realms of Verse and of many essays in the LRB and TLS, editor of Dante in English and of Manzoni’s The Betrothed. He spent time in London, Cambridge, Pisa and Paris before settling in Oxford where he lectures at the University and is a Fellow of St Anne’s College. He lives with his unruly family in a thoroughly imperfect interior.
 
 
Beauty by Raphael Selbourne (Tindal Street Press)
 
Beauty is a twenty-year-old Bangladeshi, back in England having fled an abusive arranged marriage. Placed on the jobseekers’ treadmill and under continuing domestic pressure, she runs away.
 
Her fractious encounters with officialdom, fellow claimants and passers-by in the city streets, exacerbated by the restrictions of language and culture, place her at the mercy of such unlikely helpers as Mark, a friendly, Staffordshire Bull Terrier- breeding ex-offender, and Peter, a middle-class underachiever on the rebound from a bitter relationship. Determined and spirited, yet tormented by doubts, Beauty is forced to examine her own beliefs and think seriously about her future. While her brothers search for her, the conflicts between her desire for personal freedom and her sense of family duty deepens. What will she do? 
 
Raphael Selbourne was born in Oxford. He studied politics at Sussex University, before moving to Italy where he was a translator, sold TV advertising and scooters. He has also taught in China and since 2004 in the West Midlands, where he now lives. He interrupted an MA in Islamic Studies at Birmingham University to write Beauty, which was the Winner of the 2009 Costa First Novel Award.
 
 
The Girl with Glass Feet by Ali Shaw (Atlantic Books)
 
A mysterious and frightening metamorphosis has befallen Ida MacLaird – she is slowly turning into glass, from the feet up. She returns to St Hauda’s Land, where she believes the glass first took hold, in the vain hope of finding a cure. Midas Crook is a young loner who has lived there all his life. When he meets Ida, something about her sad, defiant spirit pierces his emotional defences. As Midas helps Ida come to terms with her affliction, she gradually unpicks the knots of his heart and they begin to fall in love…
 
What they need most is time – and time is slipping away fast. Will they find a way to save her?
 
Ali Shaw was born in 1982 and grew up in a small town in Dorset. He graduated from Lancaster University with a first-class degree in English Literature and has since worked as a bookseller and at Oxford’s Bodleian Library. He is currently writing his second novel.
 
 
About the judges
 
Elizabeth Buchan (Chair) began her career as a blurb writer for Penguin Books. She later became a fiction editor at Random House but decided after a couple of years that she should do what she wished to do: write. Her novels include Daughters of the Storm, Light of the Moon, Consider the Lily and the bestselling Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman, which has sold all over the world and has been made into a television film for CBS. Her latest novel is Separate Beds, to be published in 2010, a story of a family’s renegotiation of their relationships after the credit crunch has hit them.
 
Her short stories have appeared in various magazines and have been broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and she reviews for the Sunday Times. She had also chaired the Betty Trask prize and been a judge for the Whitbread (now Costa) book awards.
 
 
William Skidelsky is books editor of the Observer. Before that he was deputy editor of Prospect magazine and, before that, literary editor of the New Statesman. Aside from books, he writes about sport and food and he is the author of a guide book, Gourmet London.
 
James Daunt opened Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street, London in 1990. He has subsequently opened a further four bookshops in central London. He remains very much a shop floor bookseller. James has also judged The Ondatjee Prize and The Whitbread First Novel Award. He is aged 46 and is married with two daughters.
 
 
 
 
About Desmond Elliott
 
Desmond Elliott’s life reads like a page-turning rags to riches story. From humble beginnings in an Irish orphanage he came to England in 1947, at the age of 16 with just £2 in his pocket, to start his publishing career at Macmillan. After a colourful career in-house, Desmond set up as an agent and subsequently went on to establish his own publishing company, Arlington Books, in 1960.
 
This dedication, coupled with creative business sense, was key to the creation of a list of hugely successful blockbuster novelists; Jilly Cooper, Leslie Thomas and Penny Vincenzi, to name but a few. Respected and loved by his authors, in the words of Candida Lycett Green, Desmond was simply “magic”.
 
Charismatic, witty, and waspish, Elliott lived his life with verve. He drank only champagne, always crossed the Atlantic on Concorde and used Fortnum & Mason as his local shop. His office was in Mayfair and he had homes in London’s St. James’s and New York’s Park Avenue. Desmond Elliott died in August 2003 at the age of 73.


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