2024 Nota Bene Prize Shortlist
Championing influential fiction celebrated by Notable Readers
We are thrilled to announce the Nota Bene Prize 2024 shortlist, which includes five debut novels, that were selected in coordination with a panel of notable readers – a curated group of influential authors, booksellers and online creators. Each title featured on this list is a thought-provoking read that has received organic, word-of-mouth recognition and is deserving of a wider readership.
The judging panel includes author, Bobby Palmer, writer and editor, Shahed Ezaydi, the CEO of Aphra and Forbes 30 Under 30, Molly Masters, and will be chaired by author and founder of Black Pens and Surviving Out Loud, Onyi Nwabineli.
As a literary prize that engages with the vast and valuable community of readers and content creators, the Nota Bene Prize champions influential fiction and seeks to guide open-minded readers towards acclaimed works of fiction that have been recommended by trusted, passionate, and notable readers.
Let’s dive into the titles…
The first debut on our list is Disturbance by Jenna Clake, published by Orion Books, which is a propulsive and razor-sharp novel that explores all the ways in which relationships and trauma can haunt our lives. On a hot summer evening, the narrator decided to hex herself free from her past relationship by exploring nascent supernatural powers to violent and haunting effect.
Another gripping debut from Irish debut author Colin Walsh is Kala, published by Atlantic Books. Kala follows a group of former friends, estranged for fifteen years, who reckon with the disappearance of their reckless childhood friend, Kala, following the discovery of human remains in the woods. Against the backdrop of a town suffocating on its own secrets, the friends are forced to confront their own complicity in the events that led to Kala's disappearance to try to stop their town’s violent patterns repeating themselves once again.
The first title on the shortlist to focus on the exhilarating rush and trepidation of first love, Claire Daverley’s Talking at Night, published by Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House, charts the burgeoning romance between Will and Rosie, who meet as teenagers. Although they appear destined to be one another's great love story, tragedy soon strikes, and their future together is shattered. However, time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been…
Another unputdownable debut that offers a mediation on a deepening romantic love is Rosewater by Liv Little, published by Dialogue Books. Filled with unforgettable characters and subtle social commentary, this daring novel follows free-spirited and fiercely independent South Londoner, Elsie, who is doing her best to keep her head above water when she meets her spirited co-worker, Bea. When Elsie’s world soon spirals out of control, Little’s debut explores whether Elsie can steady herself without falling through the cracks of her fragile life.
The dark, funny and surreal debut, The Centre, written by Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi and published by Pan Macmillan, Picador, takes readers on a journey through Karachi, London and New Delhi. Anisa Ellahi longs to become a translator of 'great works of literature’ and is seduced by the Centre, an elite, invite-only programme that guarantees complete fluency in any language in just ten days. In an interrogation of the sticky politics of language, translation and appropriation, this debut explores how Anisa’s experience at the Centre comes at a disturbing hidden cost.
Our final shortlisted title, Chrysalis by Anna Metcalfe, published by Granta, is a strikingly contemporary story about solitude and selfhood, and about the blurred line between self-care and narcissism. Chrysalis charts a narrator’s experience of being repeatedly observed and witnessed by a number of people in her life – each of whom desire a certain closeness. And yet, each act of witnessing leads to a transformation of our narrator into someone else: a woman on a singular and solitary path with the power to inspire and to influence her followers, for good and ill.