Missouri Williams and China Miéville among writers on ‘adventurous’ Goldsmiths shortlist — SkimNews
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- Goldsmiths Prize shortlists six novels including works by Missouri Williams, China Miéville, and Polly Barton for its £10,000 award honoring fiction that 'breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.'
- Missouri Williams makes the list with The Vivisectors, a Booker-longlisted novel about academics and gardeners locked in a power struggle, praised in the Guardian for 'Ballardian ferocity.'
- China Miéville appears with The Rouse, a 1,200-page paranormal novel 20 years in the making, described by Stuart Kelly in the Guardian as 'affecting, intelligent and, in more than one place, very, very frightening.'
- Polly Barton and Aea Varfis-Van Warmelo are the two debut novelists shortlisted — Barton's What Am I, a Deer? follows a woman working in Frankfurt who becomes fixated on a commuter, while Varfis-Van Warmelo's Attention-Seeking Behaviour combines fiction, memoir, and essay.
- Two Irish authors round out the list: Doireann Ní Ghríofa's Said the Dead explores women incarcerated in a Cork asylum, and Keith Ridgway's Dooneen paints a picture of social unrest in Dublin.
- The winner will be announced at Foyles on Charing Cross Road on 4 November, with the judging panel chaired by Francis Spufford alongside Kate Briggs, Hari Kunzru, and David Sexton.
- Previous winners of the prize, launched in 2013, include Rachel Cusk, Eimear McBride, Ali Smith, Isabel Waidner, and Benjamin Myers; CD Rose won last year for We Live Here Now.
Why it matters: The Goldsmiths shortlist signals which formally adventurous novels the UK literary establishment is endorsing this year, and the slate is notably heavy on returning heavyweights — Miéville's first novel in two decades and a Booker-longlisted Williams — alongside two debuts and two Irish voices, giving the experimental-fiction prize unusually broad demographic reach.
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