Two of the six books on the shortlist for the £25,000 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction are by Irish authors: The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry, set in Butte, Montana, in 1891, and Ferdia Lennon’s Glorious Exploits, set in Syracuse, Sicily, in 412 BC.
Also shortlisted were The Mare by Angharad Hampshire; The Book of Days by Francesca Kay; The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller and The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, which was also shortlisted for last year’s Booker Prize.
Glorious Exploits won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize 2024 and the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.
The shortlist was revealed by way of a treasure hunt video shot at Abbotsford,…