Spufford wins 2017 Ondaatje Prize

Francis Spufford’s debut novel Golden Hill (Faber) has won the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize in the UK.

The annual £10,000 (A$17,630) prize is awarded for ‘a distinguished work of fiction, nonfiction or poetry, evoking the spirit of a place’.

The winning novel, which is set in 18th-century New York, also won the Costa First Novel Award in 2016. Judge Henry Hitchings said Golden Hill is ‘that rare thing—an ingenious novel that draws on profound research to evoke the spirit of another age, yet wears that spirit lightly’, and judge Mimi Khalvati called it an ‘unpredictable, exhilarating, protean novel’ that ‘captures the vein of darkness, the fear of the other, that runs through American history’.

For more information about the award, click here.

Category: International news