‘Guardian’ First Book Award 2015 shortlist announced

Six titles have been shortlisted for the UK’s £10,000 (A$21,394) Guardian First Book Award, including a poetry collection, a nonfiction title, a short story collection and three novels. Andrew McMillan’s Physical (Jonathan Cape) is just the second poetry collection to be shortlisted for the award since it was established in 1999. The three novels shortlisted are Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers (Faber), Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen (Scribe) and Sara Taylor’s The Shore (William Heinemann). Also shortlisted are Diane Cook’s short story collection Man v Nature (Oneworld) and Peter Pomerantsev’s book about 21st-century Russia, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible (Faber). The Guardian books editor Claire Armitstead said it was ‘a great year for fiction, with writers pushing at all sorts of boundaries’, adding that while nonfiction was ‘harder to find’, Pomerantsev’s book ‘brings a dazzling eye for detail to the surreal excesses of Russian society’. The shortlist was chosen from a longlist of 10. The winner will be announced on 25 November.

Category: International news