Miéville Wins £10,000 Goldsmiths Prize for The Rouse — SkimNews
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- China Miéville won the £10,000 Goldsmiths prize for The Rouse at a London ceremony on Wednesday, making the 1,264-page novel the longest ever to take the award since it launched in 2013.
- The Rouse opens in London in 1973 and follows Maur, whose son Ewan dies in an apparent suicide at an army barracks; as she investigates with other bereaved families and a journalist, she discovers the British state's covert interest in the paranormal, alongside a parallel story of a soldier who has experienced supernatural forces.
- Francis Spufford, who chaired the judges, said all five shortlisted books were excellent, but the winner "broke most explosively with expectation" in ambition, bold use of history, linguistic experiment and sheer scale.
- Stuart Kelly called the novel "maximalist, dense, disorienting and discomfiting", compared it with Roberto Bolaño and Mircea Cărtărescu, and said it is "very, very frightening" in places.
- Hari Kunzru, one of the judges, described it as "a monumental work" in which Miéville attempts to describe indescribable phenomena by stretching language to its limits and pushing formal and genre boundaries.
- Tanjil Rashid, the New Statesman's culture editor, said Miéville gives "imaginative form to a distinctly weird vision of the world, deeply personal but also unashamedly political", adding that of all his awards this is the one he was "destined for".
- The Rouse was 20 years in the writing, and Miéville called it "the defining book of my life" in a New Statesman interview; the magazine co-founded the prize with Goldsmiths, University of London.
Why it matters: By giving the £10,000 to a 1,264-page novel for ambition, linguistic experiment and sheer scale, the judges handed the award to the work most committed to the prize's "breaks the mould" mission, and made The Rouse its longest winner since 2013. The five shortlisted rivals, including Polly Barton and Keith Ridgway, go without the award.
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