Xan Brooks longlisted for £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025
Xan Brooks’s widely-reviewed second novel, The Catchers, has been nominated for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2025. It is the second time Brooks has been selected for the award – one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world.
Chair of Judges, Katie Grant, said: ‘It has been exciting to read the diverse crop of novels on the WSP 2025 Longlist. We’ve discovered little-known aspects of our collective pasts, experienced excesses of human behaviour, and been placed so authentically in the middle of the action that we’ve felt part of the action. We’re delighted to celebrate debut and emerging writers published by small presses, as well as more established authors and publishers.’
Brooks says: ‘There were times when I worried I'd shot myself in the foot with The Catchers. The book moves from 1920s New York through Appalachia to Mississippi. Each place has its own distinct history, culture and flavour; it occasionally felt as though I was cramming three historical novels into one. So I'm ridiculously delighted by this longlisting. It makes all of the headaches worthwhile.’
The Catchers explores the birth of popular music in the USA – song-catcher John Coughlin travels from New York in search of recording the musical talents of the day. His assignment leads him to small-town Tennessee where he builds his reputation and soon begins a journey south to find even greater glory – and wealth. Here he discovers the extraordinary teenage musician Moss Evans, a guitarist running a bootleg liquor store in the Mississippi Delta. But it is spring 1927, the year of the great flood, and as devastation takes hold, Coughlin and Moss begin a thrilling road trip through a dangerous landscape where nothing seems stable in a character-driven story of exploitation, greed and discovery.
The judges of The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, include Rosi Byard-Jones, Rosamund de la Hey, Katie Grant (chair), James Holloway, Elizabeth Laird, James Naughtie and Saira Shah.
Discover more at www.walterscottprize.co.uk/news-and-media
Buy now https://www.saltpublishing.com/products/the-catchers-9781784633202
