Novelist Sebastian Barry has been shortlisted for the 2017 Walter Scott prize for historical fiction, the winner of which will be announced on June 17.
The 2017 Walter Scott prize for historical fiction awards the winner £25,000 (€29,000). Barry is nominated for his Costa-winning novel Days Without End
Francis Spufford’s debut novel Golden Hill is also in contention for the award, which was instigated in 2010. Both have an American setting; Barry's book is set in the Indian and American Civil Wars, Spufford's work depicting 18th-century Manhattan.
The Walter Scott prize judges have praised Barry's much-revered novel for “courage, loyalty and, amid the horrors, grace. This is a living novel.”
Orange prize-winner Rose Tremain and Man Booker-winner Graham Swift are also on the shortlist.
The winner will be announced at the Borders book festival on 17 June.
Sebastian Barry won the 2016 Costa Book of the Year award for the second time in January with Days Without End. He is the first novelist to win the overall Book of the Year prize on two occasions, worth £30,000 (€35,000). Poets Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes are the only two writers to have won the double so far.
Judges on the Costa-winning occasion described Days Without End as a “miracle of a book”. Professor Kate Williams, chair of the final judges, declared of the Barry novel as follows: “we all loved this magnificent, searing, thrilling book, brutal, terrifying yet with moments of light and beauty. Brilliant writing that takes you to the depths and the heights of humanity, and a voice you simply can’t forget”.
