NEWS of the Dead by James Robertson has won the 2022 Walter Scott Prize for best historic fiction.
The announcement was made on stage at the Borders Book Festival by the Duke of Buccleuch earlier tonight.
The book is set in a remote Scottish glen, rain-swept and harshly beautiful, where centuries pass slowly and legends are born.
Here, three remarkable people have lived at different times – Conach, an Iron Age saint, Sandy Gibb, a light-fingered literary adventurer of the nineteenth century, and Maja, a girl of today with secrets of her own.
There's such wonderful warm camaraderie in the room this evening: all on stage now to celebrate their superb historical fiction. #walterscottprize #ywsp at @BordersBookFest pic.twitter.com/uWUSZTcyXY
— Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction (@waltscottprize) June 17, 2022
The lives of these three, and the brilliantly drawn characters who surround them, are shaped by the glen and the myths that inhabit it.
Robertson will receive the £25,000 prize.
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