Soobramanien, Williams win Goldsmiths Prize for ‘Diego Garcia’

In the UK, Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams have won the £10,000 (A$17,700) Goldsmiths Prize for their ‘extraordinary’ novel Diego Garcia (Fitzcarraldo). Soobramanien and Williams are the first duo to win in the award’s 10-year history.

In the book, two writer friends meet Diego, a poet, who tells them he is named for his mother’s island in the Chagos Archipelago, which she and her community were forced to leave by British soldiers in 1973. The writers become obsessed with this notorious episode and the continuing resistance of the Chagossian people, and want to write in solidarity, questioning how to share a story that is not theirs to tell, and how to account for a loss not theirs to grieve.

‘By turns funny, moving and angry, Diego Garcia is as compelling to read as it is intricately wrought,’ said judge Tim Parnell. ‘For Natasha Soobramanien and Luke Williams, collaboration is both method and politics.’

Soobramanien and Williams were chosen as the winners from a shortlist of six.

Established in 2013 by Goldsmiths University of London, the prize rewards fiction that ‘breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form’ and ’embodies the spirit of invention that characterises the genre at its best’.

Isabel Waidner won last year’s Goldsmiths Prize for Sterling Karat Gold (Peninsula Press). For more information, see the prize website.

Category: International news