What a story! First novel by bookseller aged 29 is up for top literature prize
A BOOKSHOP worker has been long-listed for the Man Booker Prize after writing her debut novel in secret.
Fiona Mozley works in The Little Apple Bookshop in York but was not allowed to tell her bosses or family about her nomination for the £ 50,000 prize for her novel Elmet.
The 29-year- old said yesterday she is expected at work today, when the long list is formally announced, but was desperately ‘trying to get someone to cover my shift’.
The Cambridge University graduate was living in London and working as an intern for a literary agent when she started Elmet four years ago. It tells the
‘Took on a life of its own’
story of a father and his two children who come into conflict with land owners after they build a homefor themselves in a copse in South Yorkshire.
‘I was living in a shared house in London and I wasn’t sure it was where I wanted to be,’ she said.
‘I went back to Yorkshire to visit family and was looking out of the window at the countryside when I started writing the first chapter on the train. After the first chapter the book took on a life of its own.’
Despite her book’s early promise Miss Mozley kept her writing secret from friends and family, and many of them have yet to read the book, which will be published on August 10.
‘I did not want to set myself up for a fall, I didn’t want to expect it to be published,’ she said. ‘I thought if I didn’t tell my friends I was writing it I’d be more likely to finish. So I just got on with it.
‘I didn’t tell my mum and dad that I was writing it until I had signed my publishing contract.’
Miss Mozley’s father Harold is a retired social worker and her mother Caroline, also retired, worked in research and development at York hospital.
Their daughter attended Fulford School, a comprehensive, in York, before being accepted to King’s College, Cambridge, to read history. Miss Mozley moved back to York to do a PhD in medieval ecopolitics four years ago. Should she win, she would be the second youngest winner of the prize.
The current favourite is Solar Bones by Mike McCormack, with Ali Smith’s Autumn also among the front-runners.
There are four US authors on the long list of 13 for the prize, whose rules were changed in 2014 to include any English language novel published in the UK.
It was previously exclusively for authors from Britain and former members of the Commonwealth and there fears that the rule change would led to it being dominated by American authors. It was won by Paul Beatty, from Los Angeles, last year.