The Walter Scott Prize Academy Recommends

22nd February, 2017

We are delighted to reveal here a list of 20 books recommended by the Walter Scott Prize Academy.

The Academy was launched last year, to help broaden the reach of the Prize and strengthen its resources. An advisory group feeding into the submission process, it comprises people at the centre of literary life in the UK and Commonwealth countries.

For the first time, and to co-incide with the Longlist announcement, the Prize is releasing a further list of 20 books recommended by the Walter Scott Prize Academy from this year’s entries. They include newly published historical novels from Australia, Canada and Africa as well as some unmissable novels from the UK. We’ll be exploring all these books further in the weeks and months to come.  Keep watching!

The Walter Scott Prize Academy Recommends:

Carol Birch Orphans of the Carnival (Canongate)

Emily Bitto The Strays (Legend Press)

Jessie Burton The Muse (Picador)

Tracy Chevalier At the Edge of the Orchard (Borough Press)

Emma Donoghue The Wonder (Picador)

Susan Fletcher Let Me Tell you About a Man I Knew (Virago)

Anna Hope The Ballroom (Doubleday)

Lauri Kubuitsile The Scattering (Penguin South Africa)

Lynne Kutsukake The Translation of Love (Knopf Canada)

Eowyn Ivey To the Bright Edge of the World (Tinder Press)

Ian McGuire The North Water (Scribner)

Abir Mukherjee A Rising Man (Harvill Secker)

S.J. Parris Conspiracy (HarperCollins)

Stephen Price By Gaslight (Oneworld)

Ralph Spurrier A Coin for the Hangman (Hookline Books)

Andrew Taylor The Ashes of London (HarperCollins)

Natasha Walter A Quiet Life (Borough Press)

A.N. Wilson Resolution (Atlantic)

Alissa York The Naturalist (Random House Canada)

Louisa Young Devotion (Borough Press)