The four winners for the Nero Book Awards 2024 – underwritten and delivered by Caffè Nero in partnership with Brunel University of London and The Booksellers Association – have been announced today by the premium coffee house.
The Nero Book Awards celebrate the best books and outstanding writing from the UK and Ireland across four categories: Fiction, Non-Fiction, Debut Fiction and Children’s Fiction. Together, the books represent high quality writing and craftmanship in literature and offer something for readers of all tastes: a true tale of love amidst a shipwreck; a folk horror story following three friends on a perilous journey to a forbidden place; a comic novel set in small town, Ireland; and a children’s adventure filled with magic, folklore and science. These four exceptional books have been selected out of hundreds of books reviewed.
Launched in 2023, the Nero Book Awards have already established themselves as ‘one of Britain and Ireland’s top literary prizes’ (The Observer) and are the only set of multi-category awards open exclusively to writers based in the UK and Ireland. The 2023 inaugural Nero Gold Prize winner was The Bee Sting by Paul Murray – following the winner announcement, the paperback edition jumped from #3,724 to #129 in the Amazon book charts.
The winners from each category were chosen by expert judging panels made up of authors, booksellers and journalists who, together, selected their best books of the year from writers based in the UK and Ireland. The full list of judges can be found here.
The winners in each category are:
- Fiction winner – Lost in the Garden by Adam S. Leslie (Dead Ink Books)
- Non-Fiction winner – Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst (Chatto & Windus)
- Debut Fiction winner – Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (Jonathan Cape)
- Children’s Fiction winner – The Twelve by Liz Hyder (Pushkin Children’s Books). Illustrated by Tom De Freston
Each category winner receives £5,000 and is now in the running for the Nero Gold Prize, Book of the Year 2024, which will be announced at a ceremony in London on 5 March 2025. A final judging panel, chaired by celebrated journalist and author Bill Bryson, will select the overall winner, who will receive an additional £30,000 prize.
Hypnotic, profound, absorbing and beautiful
The winner of the Fiction category is folk horror novel Lost in the Garden by Adam S. Leslie. Disturbing, dreamlike and unsettling, the book follows Heather, Rachel and Antonia travelling to Almanby, a place from an old wives’ tale that everybody knew nobody should go to. As they travel through ever-shifting geography and encounter strange voices in the fizz of shortwave radio, it becomes harder and harder to tell friend from foe. The judges described it as “a surprising folk horror about everyday encounters with the incredible. Vulnerable, rooted characters come of age in a hazy, hypnotic book that reflects contemporary Britain through a distorted lens.” Adam S. Leslie lives in Oxford and is a novelist, screenwriter and a psychedelic pop singer-songwriter who produces music under the name Berlin Horse. Lost in the Garden is published by Dead Ink Books, an independent press based in Liverpool.
Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst is this year’s Non-Fiction winner. This narrative non-fiction book charts the true story of a couple in the 1970s who, bored of suburban life, decide to sell their house, build a boat and set sail for New Zealand. Halfway around the world, their boat is struck by a whale, and they are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for 118 days. It is a story of how we survive – both at sea and in life. The Non-Fiction judges were full of praise, describing it as “a captivating gem of creative non-fiction writing that grips both as a human survival story, and as a profound, almost mythical tale of the wide blue yonder and the things that sustain us in times of crisis.” Maurice and Maralyn has already been named a Guardian, Observer and Waterstones non-fiction book of the year and has earned praise across the board with the Guardian describing it as ‘electrifying’. Maurice and Maralyn is Sophie Elmhirst’s debut following an accomplished career as an award-winning journalist, including contributing regularly to The Guardian’s Long Read. She won the British Press Award in 2020 for Feature Writer of the Year and in 2024, she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Journalism.
The winner in the Debut Fiction category is the deeply funny Wild Houses by Colin Barrett, set in County Mayo, Ireland. Barrett is a renowned short story writer, having been published in Granta, the New Yorker and Harper’s Bazaar. His first short story collection, Young Skins, won numerous awards including the Guardian First Book Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Calm with Horses was adapted into a major feature film starring Barry Keoghan in 2020. Wild Houses is his much-anticipated debut novel and has been described as ‘thrillingly moreish’ by The Sunday Times. It follows a small-town feud, a kidnapping and a life-altering weekend resulting in a darkly funny and deeply moving novel. On Wild Houses, our Debut Fiction judges said “Our winner Wild Houses was a clear stand-out for the sheer quality of its writing; a literary page-turner, with prose both lyrical and absorbing, brilliant dialogue and characters who seem to have walked off the street and onto the page. The wit and humour in this novel belies an undercurrent of menace, and yet there is deep empathy and compassion at its heart.”
Finally, the winner of the 2024 Children’s Fiction category is The Twelve by Liz Hyder, illustrated by Tom De Freston. This is a deeply magical novel that explores the haunting mystery of a vanishing sister and the folklore surrounding ‘The Twelve’. The novel follows protagonist Kit on a winter holiday with her sister, Libby, and their mum. When suddenly her sister vanishes into thin air and only a local boy named Story remembers her, he and Kit join forces and embark on a journey into a world steeped in ancient folklore to uncover the truth and find Libby. The Twelve has won praise from critics including The Observer, who described it as “a dark fantasy in the vein of Alan Garner.” Our Children’s Fiction judges were also impressed, describing the book as having “Beautiful characterisation, compelling storytelling, this is a book for now and all time – an immersive time-travel adventure that will keep readers hooked.”Liz’s debut novel, Bearmouth, won the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize, the Branford Boase Award and the Children’s Book of the Year in 2019 by The Times. She runs creative writing workshops and is a freelance award-winning arts PR consultant.
Captivating story telling
Gerry Ford, Founder and Group CEO of Caffè Nero commented: “The standard of entries this year was very high and with such incredible shortlists, our judges had a difficult job of picking just one winner in each category. They have chosen four impressive books which display an outstanding level of writing and captivating story telling. These four books are worthy winners and collectively, will appeal to readers of all ages and tastes and represent the best writing from the UK and Ireland. I look forward to announcing our Gold Prize winner in March, and I am proud to continue to support the arts at Caffè Nero through the Nero Book Awards.”
Bill Bryson, Chair of Judges said: “I am delighted and proud to be part of this year's prize, especially as the four category winners are so outstanding. I can say at once that it will be a severe challenge to choose an overall winner.”
To be eligible for the 2024 Nero Book Awards, books must have been first published in English in the UK or Ireland between 1 December 2023 and 30 November 2024. At the time of entry, authors must have been alive and a resident in the UK or Ireland for the past three years.
For full details of the shortlists follow Nero Book Awards on X and Instagram. For additional information, visit nerobookawards.com.
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