Eimear McBride takes fiction prize in British literary awards

Irish author Eimear McBride has been named as one of the winners of Britain’s oldest literary awards.

McBride and Laura Cumming were announced Monday evening as the 2017 winners of the James Tait Black Prizes, awarded annually by the University of Edinburgh.

The winners of the £10,000 prizes were unveiled by broadcaster Sally Magnusson at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

McBride scooped the fiction prize with her second novel The Lesser Bohemians, which traces a love affair between an 18-year-old drama student and an older actor in mid-90s London.

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The writer, who was born in Liverpool but grew up in the west of Ireland, topped a shortlist that included A Country Road, A Tree by Jo Baker; What Belongs To You by Garth Greenwell; and The Sport Of Kings by CE Morgan.

Her debut novel A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing won the 2013 Goldsmiths Prize and the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction 2014.

Fiction judge of the James Tait Black Prize, Dr Alex Lawrie, of the University of Edinburgh, said of her latest novel: "Eimear McBride's astonishing second novel is full of wit, energy and nerve, an extraordinary rendering of a young woman's consciousness as she eagerly embarks on a new life in London."

Cumming’s winning book, The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit Of Velazquez, is her first biography.

It focuses on the Spanish court painter Diego Velazquez and a Victorian bookseller who thought he had found a lost painting of the celebrated artist.

Cumming, art critic for The Observer since 1999, fought off competition from a shortlist that featured A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found In A Skip by Alexander Masters; A Stain In The Blood: The Remarkable Voyage Of Sir Kenelm Digby by Joe Moshenska; and Rasputin by Douglas Smith.

Biography judge Dr Jonathan Wild, of the University of Edinburgh, said of the winning entry: “The Vanishing Man is a real gem of a book which fully deserves its place among the winners of this prize.”

The James Tait Black Awards were founded in 1919 by Janet Coats, the widow of publisher James Tait Black, to commemorate her husband's love of good books.

PA