Literary prize for debut novelist’s shortlisted ‘gem’
A DEBUT novelist has won a renowned international literary award.
Richard Owain Roberts’ first novel, Hello Friend We Missed You, was awarded the Not The Booker prize.
He beat best-selling authors Maggie O’Farrell and Emma Donoghue to triumph in the competition, set up as an alternative to the world famous Booker Prize for Fiction.
There has already been international interest in film, TV and translation rights for the darkly comic novel.
Richard, who lives in Pontcanna, Cardiff, said: “I am happy and thankful in this moment, but now I am ready to work again.”
The novel is his second book to be released by Parthian Books, based in Cardigan, following his short fiction collection All The Places We Lived. It follows main character Hill as he returns home to Ynys Môn – where Richard was born – to care for his dying father.
The book was selected as a finalist from a longlist of more than 200 books, including releases from some of the world’s largest publishers.
The novel was picked more than 150 times by members of the public during two separate rounds of voting.
Competition organiser Sam Jordinson said Hello Friend We Missed You was “the gem of this year’s shortlist”.
In a review, he said: “After a decade, the Not the Booker prize still has the ability to produce surprises.
“I would never have predicted that the most interesting and original book on this year’s shortlist would be something like Hello Friend We Missed You, because Richard Owain Roberts’ book is wonderfully unlike anything else.”
The Not the Booker Prize was started by The Guardian as a hunt “to find the year’s best book, which may – or may not – tally with the assessment of the Booker prize judges”.
Dr Jamie Harris, a lecturer in literature and place at Aberystwyth University, said the competition was a “deliberately tongue-in-cheek rejoinder to the Booker’s perceived pomposity”.
Writing for The Conversation, Dr Harris said the competition provided an opportunity for books like Hello Friend We Missed You which “would simply never have been considered for entry to the Booker”. He said: “This is because the submission criteria makes it near impossible for small presses – like Parthian, Roberts’ Cardigan-based publisher – to even afford to enter.”
Hello Friend We Missed You is now available online and in bookshops.