Nero Book Awards Shortlists 2024

Irish writers Donal Ryan and Colin Barrett are among the shortlisted nominees for this year’s Nero Book Awards. Donal Ryan has been shortlisted in the Fiction category for his novel Heart, Be at Peace, while Colin Barrett’s Wild Houses features in the Debut category.

Uniquely celebrating books across multiple genres, the Nero Book Awards features shortlists and winners across four categories, and culminates with one book being crowned overall winner of the Gold Prize Book of the Year. Each year, the shortlists feature 16 books from the four categories, Children’s Fiction, Fiction, Debut Fiction and Non-Fiction, written by authors based in the UK and Ireland.

The category winners will be announced on 14th?January 2025. The 2024 Nero Gold Prize will be announced live at a ceremony in London on 5th?March 2025, when the book of the year will be selected from the four category winners.

Nero Book Awards 2024 Category Shortlists

Fiction

• Levitation For Beginners by Suzannah Dunn (Abacus)
• The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
• Lost in the Garden by Adam S Leslie (Dead Ink Books)
• Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan (Doubleday)

Non-Fiction

• Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women by Ellen Atlanta (Headline Non-Fiction)
• An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi (WH Allen)
• Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst (Chatto & Windus)
• All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield (Profile Books)

Children’s Fiction

• How to Survive a Horror Movie by Scarlet Dunmore (Little Tiger)
• Bird Boy by Catherine Bruton (Nosy Crow)
• The Twelve by Liz Hyder (Pushkin Children’s Books). Illustrated by Tom De Freston
• Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody by Patrick Ness (Walker Books). Illustrated by Tim Miller

Debut Fiction

• Wild Houses by Colin Barrett (Jonathan Cape)
• Monumenta by Lara Haworth (Canongate)
• Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon (Fig Tree)
• No Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald (Serpent’s Tail)

See here for further information on the Nero Book Awards 2024.