Authors' Club Best First Novel Award

The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award is awarded by the Authors' Club to the most promising first novel of the year, written by a British or Irish author and published in the UK during the calendar year preceding the year in which the award is presented.^[1] Inaugurated in 1954, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award is the longest-running UK prize for debut fiction and – except for the James Tait Black and the Hawthornden – the oldest literary prize in Britain.

[1]

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
1954	David Unwin	The Governor's Wife
1955	Brian Moore	Judith Hearne
1956	Harry Bloom	Episode
1957	Edmund Ward	Summer in Retreat
1958	Alan Sillitoe	Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
1959	David Caute	At Fever Pitch
1960	Lionel Davidson	The Night of Wenceslas
1961	Jim Hunter	The Sun in the Morning
1962	John Pearson	Gone to Timbuctoo
1963	David Rubin	The Greater Darkness
1964	Robin Douglas-Home	Hot for Certainties
1965	David James Mossman	Beggars on Horseback
1966	Leslie Thomas	The Virgin Soldiers
1967	Paul Bailey	At the Jerusalem
1968	Barry England	Figures in a Landscape
1969	Peter Tinniswood	A Touch of Daniel
1970	Rachel Ingalls	Theft
1971	Rosemary Hawley Jarman	We Speak No Treason
1973	Jennifer Johnston	The Captains and the Kings
1975	Sasha Moorsom	A Lavender Trip
1977	Barbara Benson	The Underlings
1978	Katharine Gordon	The Emerald Peacock
1979	Martin Page	The Pilate Plot
1980	Dawn Lowe-Watson	The Good Morrow
1981	Anne Smith	The Magic Glass
1982	Frances Vernon	Privileged Children
1983	Katherine Moore	Summer at the Haven
1984	Frederick R. Hyde-Chambers	Lama: A Novel of Tibet
1985	Magda Sweetland	Eightsome Reel
1986	Helen Harris	Playing Fields in Winter
1987	Peter Benson	The Levels
1988	Gilbert Adair	The Holy Innocents
1989	Lindsey Davis	The Silver Pigs	^[3]
1990	Alan Brownjohn	The Way You Tell Them	^[4]
1991	Zina Rohan	The Book of Wishes and Complaints	^[5]
1992	David Park	The Healing	^[6]
1993	Nadeem Aslam	Season of the Rainbirds	^[7]
1994	Andrew Cowan	Pig
1995	T. J. Armstrong	Walter and the Resurrection of G
1996	Diran Adebayo	Some Kind of Black
1996	Rhidian Brook	The Testimony of Taliesin Jones
1997	Mick Jackson	The Underground Man
1998	Jackie Kay	Trumpet
1999	Ann Harries	Manly Pursuits
2000	Brian Clarke	The Stream	^[8]
2001	Carl Tighe	Burning Worm	^[9]
2002	Ben Faccini	The Water Breather
2003	Dan Rhodes	Timoleon Vieta Come Home	^[10]
2004	Susan Fletcher	Eve Green	^[11]
2004	Neil Griffiths	Betrayal in Naples
2005	Henry Shukman	Sandstorm	^[12]
2006	Nicola Monaghan	The Killing Jar	^[13]
2007	Segun Afolabi	Goodbye Lucille	^[14]
2009	Laura Beatty	Pollard	^[15]
2010	Anthony Quinn	The Rescue Man	^[16]^[17]
2011	Jonathan Kemp	London Triptych
2012	Kevin Barry	City of Bohane
2013	Ros Barber	The Marlowe Papers
2013	I. J. Kay	Mountains of the Moon
2014	Jack Wolf	The Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones
2015	Carys Bray	A Song for Issy Bradley
2016	Benjamin Johncock	The Last Pilot
2017	Rowan Hisayo Buchanan	Harmless Like You
2018	Gail Honeyman	Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
2019	Guy Gunaratne	In Our Mad and Furious City	^[18]
2020	Claire Adam	Golden Child	^[19]
2021	Ingrid Persaud	Love After Love	^[20]
2022	Tish Delaney	Before My Actual Heart Breaks	^[21]
2023	Ayanna Lloyd Banwo	When We Were Birds	^[22]
2024	Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow	All the Little Bird-Hearts	^[23]
2025	Ferdia Lennon	Glorious Exploits

Authors' Club Best First Novel Award

Winner

References

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