W. H. Smith today (6 January) announced the books selected by the judges for consideration in the W H Smith Literary Award for 1998.

     The Award, which is in its 40th year is open to any fiction or non-fiction title written in English and published in the UK. Among previous winners are some of the leading names of 20th Century literature, including Patrick White, Nadine Gordimer, Derek Walcott and Seamus Heaney, who all went on to win the Nobel Prize. The winner of the 1997 Award was A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes. The winner of the 1998 award will receive prize money of £10,000.

     The judging panel is chaired by John Carey, Merton Professor of English at Oxford University with Lucy Hughes Hallett and Hilary Mantel. Ruth Rendell will be joining the panel as a guest judge.

     A shortlist of six books will be announced in February and the winner of the  W. H. Smith Literary Award will be announced on 4 March.

     Jeremy Hardie, Chairman, said, "1998 will be a key year for W H Smith; Waterstone's will be leaving our Group and W.H.Smith will be underlining its position as the UK's leading bookshop. This award celebrates the importance of English language books and demonstrates our continuing commitment to the book trade."

W. H. Smith Literary Award 1998

Nominees

Barbara Anderson  - Proud Garments - Cape
John Banville  - The Untouchable  - Picador
John Brewer  - The Pleasures of the Imagination - Harper Collins
John Burnside  - The Dumb House - Cape
Peter Carey - Jack Maggs - Faber
Vikram Chandra - Love and Longing in Bombay - Faber
Susanah Clapp - With Chatwin: Portrait of a Writer  -Cape
Jonathan Coe  - The House of Sleep  - Viking
Joseph Connolly - Stuff  - Faber
Jim Crace - Quarantine  - Viking
Helen Dunmore - Talking to the Dead - Penguin
Lesley Glaister - Easy Peasy - Bloomsbury
Stephen Heighton - Flight Paths of the Emperor - Granta
Tobias Hill - Skin and Other Stories - Faber
Eric Hobsbawm - On History - Weidenfeld
Christopher Hope - Me, the Moon and Elvis Presley - Macmillan
Ted Hughes - Tales from Ovid - Faber
Jonathan Keates - Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture - Chatto
Oliver Knox - Rebels and Informers: Stirrings of Irish Independence - Murray
Jennifer Lash - Blood Ties - Bloomsbury
Jeremy Lewis - Cyril Connolly - Cape
Ian McEwan - Enduring Love - Cape
Bernard MacLaverty - Grace Notes - Cape
Andrew Motion - John Keats - Faber
Charles Nichols - Rimbaud in Africa - Cape
Timothy O'Grady - I Could Read The Sky - Harville
Iain Pears - An Instance of the Finger Post - Cape
Liza Pickard - Restoration London - Weidenfeld
Harry Ritchie - The Last Pink Bits -Hodder
Graham Robb - Victor Hugo - Picador
William Riviere - Echoes of War - Sceptre
Carol Shields - Larry's Party - Fourth Estate
Stella Tillyard - Citizen Lord - Chatto
Claire Tomalin - Jane Austen - Viking
Rose Tremain - The Way I Found Her - Sinclair Stevenson
Jenny Uglow - Hogarth - Faber
 
 

The Shortlisted Authors were:

John Burnside - The Dumb House
Peter Carey - Jack Maggs
Ted Hughes - Tales from Ovid
Ian McEwan - Enduring Love
Charles Nicholl - Somebody Else: Arthur Rimbaud in Africa
Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

Ted Hughes was the eventual winner.

Enquiries:

Anna Passey                     W H Smith Group                     0171 409 3222