The Catchers by Xan Brooks Shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2025
Salt Publishing is delighted to announce that The Catchers, the acclaimed second novel by Xan Brooks, has been shortlisted for the prestigious RSL Ondaatje Prize 2025.
Awarded annually by the Royal Society of Literature, the £10,000 Ondaatje Prize celebrates outstanding works of fiction, non-fiction, or poetry that best evoke the spirit of place. This year’s shortlist recognises The Catchers for its haunting, immersive portrait of 1920s America — a land of floodwaters, bootleg liquor, and the birth of popular music.
Set in the spring of 1927, against the backdrop of the devastating Mississippi flood, The Catchers follows John Coughlin, a song-catcher from New York, on a journey through the American South in search of the next great sound. Tasked with sourcing and recording hill-country musicians, Coughlin’s quest leads him to small-town Tennessee, and then deeper into the Delta, where he discovers Moss Evans — a gifted Black teenage guitarist running bootleg liquor through the submerged landscape.
As the two travel north through a ruined, unstable Old South toward the promise of New York, Brooks’s novel lays bare the complex dynamics of power, exploitation, and artistic ambition. The Catchers is both a page-turning road novel and a searing exploration of race, music, myth-making, and cultural theft — a tale that resonates powerfully in the present.
The novel was longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and has already received widespread critical acclaim:
‘Bristles with expertly calibrated menace and moral ambiguity’ — TLS
‘Elegant and eloquent’ — Daily Mail
‘A propulsive narrative that immediately grabs our interest’ — Financial Times
‘The Catchers is a delight’ — The Guardian
‘Hugely atmospheric’ — Independent
‘An evocative musical road trip’ — Observer
‘A spacious, sweeping novel’ — The Spectator
‘This incisive, sharply written novel’ — The Sunday Time
Chris Hamilton-Emery, Director of Salt Publishing, said:
“We’re absolutely thrilled to see Xan Brooks shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize. The Catchers is a richly imagined, beautifully written novel that captures both the brutality and the hope of its time and place. It’s a story of music and myth, ambition and betrayal — we’re so pleased to see it recognised on this outstanding shortlist.”
Xan Brooks said:
“I love books that open doors to other worlds and are able to frame the sights, sounds and smells of a place, so I’m especially delighted to see The Catchers included on the Ondaatje Prize shortlist. It’s one door among six.”
The winner of the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2025 will be announced on 15 May.
The Catchers is available now from Salt Publishing and all good bookshops.