The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, given each year to “writing of exceptional quality which is set in the past,” has revealed its 2023 longlist.
Robert Harris made the list for his novel Act of Oblivion, about the search for the killers of King Charles I of England. Harris won the prize in 2014 for his novel An Officer and a Spy. Simon Mawer, who took home the 2016 prize for Tightrope, was nominated this year for his novel Ancestry, set in the 19th century and based on his own family.
William Boyd was nominated for The Romantic, while Fiona McFarlane made the longlist for The Sun Walks Down, which was published Tuesday in the U.S.
Lucy Caldwell scored a nomination for These Days, along with Paddy Crewe for My Name Is Yip, Adrian Duncan for The Geometer Lobachevsky, Paterson Joseph for The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, Elizabeth Lowry for The Chosen, Sean Lusk for The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley, Devika Ponnambalam for I Am Not Your Eve, and Jock Serong for The Settlement.
The Walter Scott Prize was first awarded in 2010 to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall. Other past winners have included Mantel for The Mirror & the Light, Sebastian Barry for On Canaan’s Side and Days Without End, and Robin Robertson for The Long Take.
A shortlist for the award, which comes with a cash prize of about $30,000, will be announced in April, with the winner revealed in June.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
