We are delighted that TIEPOLO BLUE by James Cahill has been longlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award.
The Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award was established in 1954, making it the longest-running UK prize for debut fiction and, except for the James Tait Black and the Hawthornden, the oldest literary prize in Britain. Past winners include Gail Honeyman, Jackie Kay and the late Gilbert Adair, also a Blake Friedmann client.
The other titles on this year’s longlist are: TO FILL A YELLOW HOUSE by Sussie Anie, THE DICTATOR’S WIFE by Freya Berry, MY NAME IS YIP by Paddy Crewe, EDGWARE ROAD by Yasmin Cordery-Khan, LITTLE BOXES by Cecilia Knapp, WHEN WE WERE BIRDS by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, BLACK BUTTERFLIES by Priscilla Morris, I’M A FAN by Sheena Patel, MOONLIGHT AND THE PEARLER’S DAUGHTER by Lizzie Pook, THE WHALEBONE THEATRE by Joanna Quinn and NO COUNTRY FOR GIRLS by Emma Styles.
Lucy Popescu, the chair of the judging panel, said: ‘We are delighted to announce our longlist of 12 debut novelists tackling a fascinating diversity of subjects. These compelling novels explore art and privilege, war, loss, blackmail and theft as well as love, desire, obsession and the pursuit of power. We visit several UK locations and are transported to the American frontier, Australia, Trinidad, Eastern Europe and the siege of Sarajevo.’
The shortlist for this year’s prize will be announced on 20 March, with the winner being revealed at the National Liberal Club on 24 May.
TIEPOLO BLUE follows the unravelling of revered art historian Donald Lamb. Freed from the constraints of academia, it looks like the anarchic contemporary art scene of 1990s London might be his salvation, but he soon suffers an earth-shattering fall from grace that leaves him questioning everyone and everything.
TIEPOLO BLUE was published in hardback by Sceptre in June 2022 to great acclaim. It attracted widespread praise, including from Patrick Gale and Stephen Fry (the latter describing it as ‘The best novel I have read for ages’), and was also included in the BBC’s and Times Literary Supplement’s ‘Best of 2022’ lists. It will be published in paperback on 27 April 2023.
James is currently writing his second novel, THE VIOLET HOUR, which will be published in hardback by Sceptre in Summer 2024. Set in New York, London and Switzerland, the novel reveals the secret history of a reclusive artist, a monomaniacal collector, and the art dealer caught between them.
Praise for TIEPOLO BLUE
‘The spirit of E.M. Forster is alive and well in James Cahill. The same palpating of damaged moral tissue, the same psychological canniness, the same gently invoked erudition, the same exactitude and eloquence – except Cahill is able to explore forbidden themes that Forster feared to touch on except posthumously’ – Edmund White
‘The best novel I have read for ages. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read… There is so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in.’ – Stephen Fry
‘Imagine if Hollinghurst and Murdoch collaborated on a witty update of DEATH IN VENICE and you'll see the appeal of James Cahill's assured debut.’ – Patrick Gale
‘The last debut novel I read that had this much talent buzzing around inside it was Alan Hollinghurst’s THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY.’ – Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
‘Beautifully captures disorientation, tenderness and heat without tipping into excess…an electric new novel written by an author skilled in the evocation of vertiginous, heightened emotion.’ – Michael Donkor, The Guardian, ‘Book of the Day’
‘The plot is propulsive, though the crafted ambience of unease simultaneously destabilizes the reader at every turn. The prose is fluid and precise but the tone equivocal, bathos merging into pathos, tragedy into farce and back again… Oscar Wilde’s paradoxes – about the relationship between art and life, illusion and reality, true and false selves – lie half submerged throughout this bravura debut, but so does the vulnerability of Thomas Mann’s Gustav von Aschenbach… It is the moments when rawness and confusion burst to the surface that prevent this witty yet unnerving book from being too clever.’ – Lucasta Miller, Times Literary Supplement
About James Cahill
Picture Credit: Darren Wheeler
James Cahill was born in London. Over the past decade, he has worked in the art world and academia, combining writing and research with a role at a leading contemporary art gallery.
His writing on art has appeared in publications including The Burlington Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The London Review of Books. He was the lead author and consulting editor of FLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (Phaidon, 2018), a survey of classical myth in art from antiquity to the present day. He was the co-curator of ‘The Classical Now’, an exhibition at King’s College London (March-April 2018), examining the relationships between ancient, modern and contemporary art.
He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King’s College London.