Booker-longlisted author Benjamin Wood has won this year’s Nero book award for fiction for his novel Seascraper.
Meanwhile, Claire Lynch won the debut fiction category for A Family Matter, and Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man took the nonfiction prize. Jamila Gavin was awarded the children’s fiction prize for My Soul, A Shining Tree.
The Nero book awards, run by Caffè Nero, were launched in 2023 after Costa Coffee abruptly ended its book awards in June 2022. The prizes aim to point readers “of all ages and interests” towards the most outstanding books published in the UK and Ireland over the past year.
The winners will now compete for the Nero Gold prize, for the overall book of the year, set to be announced in March. Each of the four winning authors receives £5,000, with the overall prize carrying a further £30,000.
The judges called fiction winner Wood’s Seascraper an “utterly immersive read, steeped in atmosphere, that explores what constitutes a well-lived life”. Set on a fictional stretch of the Merseyside coast, the novel follows Thomas, a shrimp fisher living with his mother, whose routines are disrupted by the arrival of a charismatic American stranger promising opportunity.
In his review for the Guardian, Jude Cook praised Wood’s “attentiveness to the prosaic details” of everyday life. “Whether it’s harnessing a horse, cooking a fry-up or tuning a guitar, he transforms the quotidian into the poetic, making the exactitude of each task sing on the page.”
Nonfiction winner Sarah Perry’s Death of an Ordinary Man is a personal account of the death of her father-in-law after a cancer diagnosis. The judges praised the book as “honest, revealing and generous”, a memoir “rendered with precision and delicacy”, and concluded: “This is a book for everyone.”
In a Guardian review, Joe Moran wrote: “What makes this book gem-like is that it succeeds in conveying the reality of death as this monumental, mythic thing that coexists surreally with the mundane world of council bin collections and neighbours hanging out their washing.”
Claire Lynch won the debut fiction award for A Family Matter, a dual-timeline novel exploring the long-term effects of prejudice and secrecy on a family separated by homophobia in the 1980s. Judges described it as “a delicately written yet powerful story of injustice”, calling it “raw, vivid and ultimately hopeful”. In her review for the Guardian, Joanna Cannon said: “In this small and powerful story, Lynch forces us to stare bigotry in the eye.”
The children’s fiction prize went to Jamila Gavin for My Soul, A Shining Tree, a novel based on the true story of Indian first world war gunner Khudadad Khan, told from four perspectives, including that of a walnut tree. In the Guardian, Imogen Russell Williams described the book as “a superbly poignant and evocative historical novel from a much-loved author”.
The category prizes were judged by panels which featured Sinéad Gleeson, Paterson Joseph and Sharna Jackson among others.
Shortlisted for the fiction award alongside Wood’s Seascraper were Cursed Daughters by Oyinkan Braithwaite, What We Can Know by Ian McEwan, and The Two Roberts by Damian Barr. For nonfiction, The Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet, Craftland by James Fox, and We Came By Sea by Horatio Clare were put forward alongside Death of an Ordinary Man.
Shortlisted for the debut fiction prize with Lynch were The Expansion Project by Ben Pester, Lush by Rochelle Dowden-Lord, and Season by George Harrison. For the children’s prize, People Like Stars by Patrice Lawrence, Dragonborn by Struan Murray and Shrapnel Boys by Jenny Pearson joined Jamila Gavin on the shortlist.
The four winners will now be considered for the Nero Gold prize by a final judging panel led by Nick Hornby, alongside broadcaster Reeta Chakrabarti and screenwriter and novelist Daisy Goodwin. The overall winner will be announced at a ceremony in March.
Last year’s Nero Gold prize winner was Guardian long read writer Sophie Elmhirst for Maurice and Maralyn, which won the nonfiction category. Lost in the Garden by Adam S Leslie won the fiction category; Wild Houses by Colin Barrett won the debut fiction category; and The Twelve by Liz Hyder, illustrated by Tom de Freston, won the children’s fiction category. In 2024, Paul Murray won the inaugural Gold prize for The Bee Sting.
