The Nero Book Awards have announced the category shortlists for 2024
The Nero Book Awards today announced its category shortlists for 2024, recognising the best books from the last 12 months across fiction, non-fiction, debut fiction and children’s fiction.
To be eligible for the 2024 Nero Book Awards, books must have been first published in English in the UK or Ireland between the 1st of December 2023 and 30th of November 2024. At the time of entry, authors must have been alive and resident in the UK or Ireland for the past three years. Each of the category winners receives £5,000, with the overall Nero Gold Prize Book of the Year winner receiving an additional £30,000.
The category winners will be revealed in January from which the overall winner will be chosen.
This year’s panel of judges includes award-winning authors, journalists, booksellers and well-known industry professionals who reviewed hundreds of books before deciding on the 16 titles, which are evenly split between major publishing houses and independent presses.
In the Fiction category, Irish novelist Donal Ryan is nominated for Heart, Be at Peace (Doubleday), in which the author uses 21 different voices to explore the hopes and fears of young people and older generations in rural Ireland. The book can be read as a companion piece to Ryan’s 2013 novel, The Spinning Heart, which was voted Irish Book of the Decade.
Adam S Leslie, who makes psychedelic pop records under the name ‘Berlin Horse’ and currently has two feature films in production, also features with Lost in the Garden, published by the small, Liverpool-based independent press, Dead Ink Books. Dreamlike, unsettling and unforgettable, it charts a surreal expedition through the idyllic yet perilous English countryside.
Based in Wiltshire, critically acclaimed novelist Suzannah Dunn is nominated for Levitation for Beginners (Abacus) which tells the tale of a beguiling new school student whose unlikely but thrilling stories about levitation draw in all around her.
The Hypocrite by the London-based journalist and editor, Jo Hamya (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), completes the fiction category. A daughter on the cusp of adulthood types out her father’s novel while the pair are on holiday in the Aeolian islands. Ten years later, he is confronted by his purported crimes in a play written by his own daughter, in this wickedly funny family drama.
In the Non-Fiction category, all four nominated books are by debut authors. The impact of digital culture and social media on beauty standards go under the microscope in Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women by Ellen Atlanta, a writer and brand consultant specialising in Gen-Z and millennial culture (Headline Non-Fiction). Atlanta weaves in her own personal story with those of other women, interrogating our obsession with the cult of beauty and the pressure to present yourself in a digitally obsessed world.
Beauty of another kind takes centre stage in All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield (Profile Books), in which an art fraudster’s demise is sharply chronicled by the subject’s former friend and business partner. This is a sparklingly sharp memoir of greed, ambition and madness at the heart of the contemporary art world.
Journalist, broadcaster and filmmaker Zeinab Badawi delivers a gripping new account of Africa told by Africans themselves, in An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence (WH Allen). Hers are the stories buried across the continent and now brought to light by the many historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers she meets.
Rounding off the non-fiction category shortlist is Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Guardian Long Read journalist, Sophie Elmhirst (Chatto & Windus). Elmhirst uncovers the truly unbelievable story of a British couple in the 1970s who abandon their suburban lives to sail around the world. In a remarkable turn of events, their boat is struck by a whale, and they are left to drift alone in the Pacific Ocean, putting their love to the test.
In Debut Fiction, the County Mayo-born writer Colin Barrett makes the shortlist with his first novel, having enjoyed success with his short story collections and novella, Calm with Horses, which was adapted into a major feature film starring Barry Keoghan in 2020. The novel for which he is nominated, Wild Houses (Jonathan Cape), sees the town of Ballina become the scene of violence and a kidnapping, as its inhabitants’ lives are changed over the course of one wild weekend.
Monumenta (Canongate) is the first novel by writer and filmmaker Lara Haworth, who also works as a political researcher specialising in the UK’s move to become carbon zero by 2025. Monumenta is a tender and magical story of familial love and loss, as a family must reckon with their Belgrade home being requisitioned amidst the government’s plans to erect a monument to an unspecified massacre in its place.
Now based in Norwich, Dublin-born Ferdia Lennon is the second Irish author to feature on the shortlist. His book, Glorious Exploits (Fig Tree), is set in Sicily, in 412 BC, as two pragmatic and underemployed potters sense an opportunity to stage a unique production of Medea in a local quarry, drawing on the poetic talents of the Greek soldiers imprisoned within it.
Completing the shortlist is No Small Thing (Serpent’s Tail) by Londoner Orlaine McDonald, a writer of Jamaican and Irish heritage with experience working in Youth Offending Units. Set in a small council flat in South London, a broken family reunites as the central character Livia finds herself living once more with the daughter she abandoned, Mickey – and Mickey’s own daughter – as the trio are drawn together in this novel about the power and pain of mothering.
In the Children’s Fiction category, topics range from heart-rending stories of human migration and healing to a megalomaniac pelican threatening to take over the world, with books for readers aged 8 to Young Adult. English teacher Catherine Bruton, based in Bath, makes the shortlist with Bird Boy (Nosy Crow), her novel about migration, conservation, healing and hope, as a grieving boy forms an unbreakable bond with an injured bird.
Edinburgh-based YA writer Scarlett Dunmore is nominated for How to Survive a Horror Movie (Little Tiger), which sees a teen horror movie unfold in a high school, as ghosts of former classmates demand that protagonist Charley solve their murders.
The Twelve by Liz Hyder (Pushkin Children’s Books), who lives in Shropshire and is a winner of the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize for Older Readers, is steeped in ancient folklore as a young girl, Kit, must dive into the depths of her imagination to rescue her missing sister, Libby.
Completing the shortlist is US-born Patrick Ness, the two-time Carnegie Medal winner, best known as the author of the book that inspired the hit film, A Monster Calls. His madcap adventure, Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody (Walker Books), is also set in a school, as a group of misfit animal pupils must face down a threat from the school bully and wannabe supervillain, Pelicarnassus.
FICTION SHORTLIST
1. Levitation For Beginners by Suzannah Dunn (Abacus)
2. The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya(Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
3. Lost in the Garden by Adam S Leslie (Dead Ink Books)
4. Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan (Doubleday)
NON-FICTION SHORTLIST
1. Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women by Ellen Atlanta (Headline Non-Fiction)
2. An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi (WH Allen)
3. Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst (Chatto & Windus)
4. All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield (Profile Books)
DEBUT FICTION SHORTLIST
1. Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (Jonathan Cape)
2. Monumenta by Lara Haworth (Canongate)
3. Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)
4. No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald (Serpent’s Tail)
CHILDREN’S FICTION SHORTLIST
1. Bird Boy by Catherine Bruton (Nosy Crow)
2. How to Survive a Horror Movie by Scarlet Dunmore (Little Tiger)
3. The Twelve by Liz Hyder (Pushkin Children’s Books). Illustrated by Tom De Freston
4. Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody by Patrick Ness (Walker Books). Illustrated by Tim Miller
Gerry Ford, Founder and CEO of Caffè Nero said there is extraordinary writing talent in the UK and Ireland and that the judges had worked tirelessly to find 16 outstanding books.
“We received an overwhelming number of entries this year, so I know it was no small feat to choose just 16 for the shortlists. Through The Nero Book Awards, we continue our long-running support of the arts and to strengthen our community-based roots. Caffè Nero is a premium coffee brand and these Awards similarly represent excellence in literature. We are grateful for the support we received in our inaugural year, and we look forward to continuing to work with publishers and authors to bring these exceptional books to as many people as possible, both in our coffee houses and the wider community. Our goal is to inspire writers to write, readers to read and everyone to live a richer life through ideas and storytelling.”
