China Miéville wins the Goldsmiths Prize for The Rouse
China Miéville’s The Rouse has received the 10,000 pound Goldsmiths Prize in London. Written over roughly 20 years, the novel follows a mother investigating her son’s death and moves through British imperial and Cold War history. Francis Spufford’s jury singled out its ambition, language and experiments with the novel’s form.
Arts··Morning
The Rouse takes the London award
British novelist China Miéville has received the Goldsmiths Prize for The Rouse, with the result announced at a London ceremony on 4 November. The award brings 10,000 pounds and recognises fiction that expands what a novel can do. Founded in 2013, it is open to writers from the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as writers resident in either country.[1], [2]
Francis Spufford, the novelist chairing the panel, praised the winning book’s historical ambition, linguistic experimentation and scale. His fellow judges were writer and translator Kate Briggs, novelist Hari Kunzru and journalist David Sexton. Their decision selected Miéville from a shortlist of six books. The praise for the work’s formal boldness was the panel’s assessment of its literary qualities.[1]
A mother investigates a barracks death
The novel begins in London in 1973. Maur’s son Ewan dies at an army barracks in what appears to be a suicide. Her attempt to find out what happened leads her towards other families mourning their children and towards a journalist. As the investigation develops, the fictional British state’s secret involvement with paranormal phenomena comes into view. A soldier’s encounters with supernatural forces form a parallel strand.[1]
The Rouse carries that investigation across British imperial and Cold War history, combining a historical saga with a paranormal thriller. Miéville has said the project occupied roughly 20 years and much of his adult life. He described it as a defining book for him, placing the long period of writing behind a novel that moves between a family’s bereavement and the state’s hidden activities.[1]
Five other novels reached the shortlist
The other finalists were What Am I, a Deer? by Polly Barton, Keith Ridgway’s Dooneen, Said the Dead by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, Attention Seeking Behaviour by Aea Varfis-van Warmelo and Missouri Williams’s The Vivisectors. Miéville’s earlier fiction includes Perdido Street Station, The City & The City and Embassytown. His previous honours include the Hugo, World Fantasy and Arthur C Clarke awards; he has also written nonfiction on international law and the Russian Revolution.[1]
