Creative writer wins top prize with debut novel
A creative writing graduate from Bath Spa University has scooped the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Award – one of the UK’s oldest literary prizes – with her debut novel.
29-year-old Evie Wyld saw off competition from an exceptional shortlist which included the Booker winner Aravind Adiga and Orange Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with her book After the Fire, a Still Small Voice.
The award for writers aged 35 and under from the UK and the Commonwealth has launched the careers of countless authors including V.S Naipaul, Margaret Drabble, David Hare and Andrew Motion.
Wyld’s novel was published to rave reviews in August 2009. Set in eastern Australia, it tells a story of fathers and sons, their wars and the things that they will never know about each other. Following the collapse of his marriage, Frank retreats to a small costal community in an attempt to build a new life for himself, away from the horrors of his violent past. Frank’s story is set against the struggles of his own father, Leon, who forty years earlier, is forced to depart from life working in his family’s suburban cake shop to face horrors of his own in the war in Vietnam.
Wyld, who now works in a small independent bookshop in Peckham called Review, received her cheque for £5,000 at a ceremony at the Century Club in Piccadilly.
Louise Doughty, chair of Judges said:
'Evie Wyld's first novel is a remarkable book. A sometimes poignant, sometimes comic story of a father and son who have so much in common but never quite connect, it is awash with fine images that linger in the mind. She writes brilliantly, able to paint a picture or create a convincing encounter with a few deft, evocative strokes, in a prose style worthy of our very best writers. There is nothing 'first novelish' about this first novel. It's a fantastically mature book, never showy, a slow burn that drags the reader in.’
The 2009 shortlist was:
Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga (Atlantic Books)
The Striped World by Emma Jones (Faber and Faber)
Six Months in Sudan by James Maskalyk (Canongate)
The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)
Waste by Tristram Stuart (Allen Lane)
After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld (Jonathan Cape)
