The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

Chimp makes Guardian longlist

29.08.08 Graeme Neill

Readers from six Waterstone's book groups are to help select the Guardian First Book Award shortlist, following the announcement of the 10-strong longlist today (29th August). The books selected on the longlist include the autobiography of Cheeta the Chimp, Orange nominated The Outcast, by Sadie Jones, and Booker longlisted God's own Country by Ross Raisin.

This year's panel of judges includes novelist Roddy Doyle; broadcaster and novelist Francine Stock; poet Daljit Nagra (longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2007), the historian David Kynatson; novelist, broadcaster and co-founder of the Orange Prize Kate Mosse and Guardian deputy editor, Katharine Viner. Claire Armitstead, literary editor of the Guardian, will chair the panel. 

Six Waterstone's stores in the UK – Bath, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, London and Oxford - will ask their reading groups to vote on the longlist.  Stuart Broom of Waterstone’s will represent their views on the judging panel.

The shortlist, of five books, agreed by the panel and the Waterstone’s readers’ groups, will be announced in early November and the overall winner in December. The winner will receive a prize of £10,000 and a promotional package across the Guardian and The Observer.



The ten books selected for the Guardian First Book Award 2008 longlist are:



A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif (Jonathan Cape)
Empires of the Indus by Alice Albinia (John Murray)
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Hamish Hamilton)
God’s own Country by Ross Raisin (Viking)
Me Cheeta: The Autobiography (Fourth Estate)
The Outcast by Sadie Jones  (Chatto & Windus)
The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross (Fourth Estate)
Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan (Abacus)
Stalin’s Children by Owen Matthews (Bloomsbury)
Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds (Seren Books)

Graeme Neill Prize Guardian First Book Award

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