The Climate Fiction Prize, a new literary prize that intends to “celebrate the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis,” has announced its inaugural shortlist. Five books move on from the previously announced longlist:
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
And So I Roar by Abi Daré
Briefly Very Beautiful by Roz Dineen
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
The Morningside by Téa Obreht
It’s an interesting mix of widely acclaimed novels and somewhat less well-known works. As the Climate Fiction Prize announcement notes, “The titles, selected from the all-female longlist announced in November, encompass a range of genres, with each tackling the climate crisis differently.” Bradley’s novel is a time-travel-SF-thriller-romance; Daré’s a more realistic novel set in Lagos, and a sequel to her The Girl with the Louding Voice; Dineen’s focuses on a woman raising her children in an intense climate crisis; Orbital views the world holistically from space; and The Morningside is like a future fable set in a drowned city that is and isn’t Manhattan.
Orbital won the Booker Prize and was shortlisted for the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, while The Ministry of Time is also currently longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
The winner of the £10,000 prize will be chosen by judges Madeleine Bunting, Nicola Chester, Andy Fryers, David Lindo, and Tori Tsui, and announced on May 14th.
