Shortlist revealed for Guardian First Book Award
29th October 2010
Three novels and two non-fiction titles have been shortlisted for the 2010 Guardian First Book Award.
Nadifa Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy, Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto by Maile Chapman and Ned Beauman's Boxer, Beetle are the three works of fiction competing for the GBP 10,000 prize.
The shortlisted non-fiction books are Kathryn Schulz's Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error and Romantic Moderns: English Writers, Artists and the Imagination from Virginia Woolf to John Piper by Alexandra Harris.
Guardian literary editor Claire Armitstead, who is chairing the judging panel, said: 'This brilliant shortlist reflects one of the year's big literary themes - how to tell stories in our new era. Each of these books provides its own very different answer.'
The winner of the award will be named on December 1st. Last year, the honour was taken by Petina Gappah for her short story collection An Elegy for Easterly.
Earlier this month, Mohamed's Black Mamba Boy was included on the shortlist for the 2010 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, along with works by Kei Miller, Daniel Swift, Susan Fletcher, Cordelia Fine and Amy Sackville.