Authors' Club Best First Novel Award


The Authors' Club Best First Novel Award is awarded by the Authors' Club to the most promising first novel of the year, written by a British or Irish author and published in the UK during the calendar year preceding the year in which the award is presented. Inaugurated in 1954, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award is the longest-running UK prize for debut fiction and – except for the James Tait Black and the Hawthornden – the oldest literary prize in Britain.

Winner

YearAuthorTitle
1954'
1955Judith Hearne
1956Episode
1957Summer in Retreat
1958Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
1959At Fever Pitch
1960'
1961'
1962Gone to Timbuctoo
1963'
1964Hot for Certainties
1965Beggars on Horseback
1966'
1967At the Jerusalem
1968Figures in a Landscape
1969'
1970Theft
1971We Speak No Treason
1973'
1975'
1977'
1978'
1979'
1980'
1981'
1982Privileged Children
1983Summer at the Haven
1984Lama: A Novel of Tibet
1985Eightsome Reel
1986Playing Fields in Winter
1987'
1988'
1989'
1990'
1991'
1992'
1993Season of the Rainbirds
1994Pig
1995Walter and the Resurrection of G
1996Some Kind of Black
1996'
1997'
1998Trumpet
1999Manly Pursuits
2000'
2001Burning Worm
2002'
2003Timoleon Vieta Come Home
2004Eve Green
2004Betrayal in Naples
2005Sandstorm
2006'
2007Goodbye Lucille
2009Pollard
2010'
2011London Triptych
2012City of Bohane
2013'
2013Mountains of the Moon
2014'
2015'
2016
2017Harmless Like You
2018Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
2019In Our Mad and Furious City
2020Golden Child
2021Love After Love
2022Before My Actual Heart Breaks
2023When We Were Birds
2024Viktoria Lloyd-BarlowAll the Little Bird-Hearts
2025Ferdia LennonGlorious Exploits-