Four top authors make shortlist for £25,000 prize

A DAZZLINGLY inventive novel that begins with an awful London dinner party, a powerful coming-of-age memoir set in Ayrshire, a moving elegy to a brother who died in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and the latest collection by one of the country’s leading poets are all in the running for Scotland’s biggest books prize.

Ali Smith’s There but for the, Janice Galloway’s All Made Up, Simon Stephenson’s Let Not the Waves of the Sea and Aibisidh by Angus Peter Campell were all announced yesterday as the shortlist for the £30,000 Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards.

Although each of them was yesterday announced as a £5,000 winner – in the categories of best fiction, non-fiction and poetry respectively – the main prize is for five times that amount.

Unlike most other major literary awards, the public get a real say in choosing the winner and can vote for their favourite on www.scottishbookawards.com/vote. They must vote by 6 August.

This year’s shortlist is particularly strong. Smith’s novel was last year hailed by Jeanette Winterson as “better than anything on the Man Booker shortlist”.

The overall winner will be announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 17 August.