'The Fishermen' shortlisted for the 2015 Guardian first book award

14:46 - 13 November 2015

Nigerian Chigozie Obioma

Man booker Prize shortlist The Fishermen by Nigerian Chigozie Obioma is currently making a wave in the literary community as it was shortlisted for the 2015 Guardian First Book Award.

Man booker Prize shortlist The Fishermen by Nigerian Chigozie Obioma is currently making a wave in the literary community as it was shortlisted for the 2015 Guardian First Book Award.

The shortlist is as follows:

Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter (fiction)

Nothing is True and Everything is Possible by Peter Pomerantsev (non-fiction)

The Shore by Sara Taylor (fiction)

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma (fiction)

Man v Nature by Diane Cook (fiction)

Physical by Andrew McMillan (poetry)

Chigozie Obioma who is currently longlisted for the 2015 Etisalat Prize for Literature , is the first Nigerian authored book to be shortlisted for the Guardian First Book award since it was established in 1999.

Guardian books editor Claire Armitstead, who announced the shortlist, said: “This has been a great year for fiction, with writers pushing at all sorts of boundaries, whether through the hybrid form of Max Porter’s Grief Is the Thing With Feathers, a profound and moving look at family bereavement partly narrated by a crow, or the fusion of African and western literary traditions in Chigozie Obioma’s fraternal tragedy The Fishermen.”

She added that non-fiction was “harder to find this year”, but that Pomerantsev’s Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible “brings a dazzling eye for detail to the surreal excesses of Russian society”.

The judging panel is made up of historian Tom Holland, broadcaster Emily Maitlis, poet Kei Miller and critic Alex Clark.

The winner will be announced on 25th November at an awards ceremony in London and he/she will receive a £10,000 (more than 3 million Naira) prize.

The Guardian First Book Award celebrates first-time writers across all genres who have had their first book published in English the last year. Previous winners of the prestigious Award include Zadie Smith, Chris Ware and Alex Ross. Last year’s winner was Colin Barrett for his short story collection, Young Skins. This year an extra book has been added to the shortlist, bringing the total to six.