Graeme Macrae Burnet’s BENBECULA longlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Booker-shortlisted author Graeme Macrae Burnet’s latest novel BENBECULA has garnered its first prize nomination – a longlisting for this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. BENBECULA is published on Polygon’s Darkland Tales list, featuring retellings of Scottish history by some of the nation’s best authors. In the novel Graeme takes readers back to the 19th century Outer Hebrides and a pitch-black tale of murder and madness reminiscent of his own acclaimed HIS BLOODY PROJECT.

The Walter Scott Prize celebrates works of historical fiction, published during the last calendar year, and which are set more than 60 years ago. A shortlist will be announced in April ahead of the prizegiving at the Borders Book Festival – held at the home of Walter Scott in Abbotsford, Melrose – in June. The winner will receive £25,000, with each shortlisted author also awarded £1,500. Recent winners include Hilary Mantel, James Robertson, Lucy Caldwell, Kevin Jared Hosein and, last year’s victor, Andrew Miller (THE LAND IN WINTER).

The Abbotsford Trust, the independent Scottish charity dedicated to preserving the legacy and extraordinary home of Sir Walter Scott, said that this year’s nominees each ‘pays fitting tribute to its namesake [Walter Scott] and encompasses all the variety of story, tone and drama that, in the hands of first-class novelists, history has to offer.’ The judging panel this year comprises of Katie Grant (Chair), Rosi Byard-Jones, Rosamund de la Hey, Elizabeth Laird, James Holloway and James Naughtie.

Also on the longlist this year are:
VENETIAN VESPERS by John Banville (Faber & Faber)
THE TWO ROBERTS by Damian Barr (Canongate)
EDEN’S SHORE by Oisín Fagan (John Murray Press)
HELM by Sarah Hall (Faber & Faber)
THE PRETENDER by Jo Harkin (Bloomsbury)
BOUNDARY WATERS by Tristan Hughes (Parthian Books)
THE MATCHBOX GIRL by Alice Jolly (Bloomsbury)
EDENGLASSIE by Melissa Lucashenko (Oneworld Publications)
ONCE THE DEED IS DONE by Rachel Seiffert (Virago)
THE ARTIST by Lucy Steeds (John Murray Press)
SEASCRAPER by Benjamin Wood (Viking)

BENBECULA was published in the UK by Polygon and WF Howes, and in Australia by Text Publishing in October 2025; a North American edition, published by Biblioasis and Recorded Books, followed in November 2025. Spanish and Catalan editions are forthcoming from Impedimenta and crims.cat respectively.

Congratulations Graeme!

About BENBECULA

On 9 July 1857, Angus MacPhee, a labourer from Liniclate on the island of Benbecula, murdered his father, mother and aunt. At trial in Inverness he was found to be criminally insane and confined in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison.

Some years later, Angus’s older brother Malcolm recounts the events leading up to the murders while trying to keep a grip on his own sanity. Malcolm is living in isolation, ostracised by the community and haunted by this gruesome episode in his past.

From Graeme Macrae Burnet, the Booker-shortlisted author of HIS BLOODY PROJECT, comes a beguiling psychological novel set on a remote Scottish island. Based on a true story and drawing on the documentary evidence of the time, Burnet constructs a gripping narrative about madness, murder and the uncertain nature of the self.

Credit: Euan Anderson

About Graeme Macrae Burnet

Graeme Macrae Burnet was born in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire and now lives in Glasgow. He has also lived in the Czech Republic, France, Portugal and London.

His first novel, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF ADÈLE BEDEAU (Contraband, 2014), received a New Writer’s Award from the Scottish Book Trust and was longlisted for the Waverton Good Read Award. A second Inspector Gorski novel, THE ACCIDENT ON THE A35, was published in 2017, and the trilogy was completed in 2024 with the ‘tragic, cinematic, propulsive' (Martin MacInnes) A CASE OF MATRICIDE, which won the 2025 Ned Kelly Award for Best International Crime Fiction.

HIS BLOODY PROJECT (Contraband, 2015) won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year Award and the Vrij Nederland Thriller of the Year, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the LA Times Mystery Book of the Year and the European Crime Fiction prize. It has been published in over twenty languages. CASE STUDY was published in 2021 by Saraband (UK), Text (ANZ) and Bolinda (UK audio) to wide critical acclaim. The North American edition was published in 2022 by Biblioasis. It has been longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022 and the Dublin Literary Award, and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and Ned Kelly International Crime Prize. It has been published in fifteen languages.

Graeme was named Author of the Year in the 2017 Sunday Herald Culture Awards and has appeared at festivals and events in Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, Russia, Estonia, Macau, Ireland, Germany, Poland and France, as well as in the UK.

Praise for BENBECULA

‘Graeme Macrae Burnet’s recreation of a macabre incident in 19th-century Hebridean history is unrelentingly disturbing and utterly gripping' – James Robertson

‘Some crime writers are successful at creating fully-formed living, breathing characters; others are more adept at playing games with the reader: to an almost unique degree, Macrae Burnet excels at both.’ – Jake Kerridge, ‘The 21 best crime and thriller novels of 2025’, The Telegraph

‘Burnet’s vivid portrayal of a troubled household by a man attempting to explain the inexplicable is dark, intense and utterly compelling.’ – Laura Wilson, ’The best recent crime and thrillers’, The Guardian

‘Reading a novel by Graeme Macrae Burnet is unnerving because the experience always becomes physical… The more compressed and oppressive and inescapable the lives of his characters become, the tighter his books are wrapped in seeming limitations, the freer you feel as a reader… The way out of the dark hell of your own mind is to imagine yourself into the minds of others. Graeme Macrae Burnet will do anything to help get you there.’ – Ian Brown, Globe and Mail

‘BENBECULA is an elegant, eerie volume… Perhaps the most impressive feature of the novella is the sense of simmering. The bare facts are not really in dispute, but the reasons and motives are deliberately opaque. Rather than any explicit cause, Macrae Burnet conjures an atmosphere of suppression.’ – Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman

Visit Graeme’s website.

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MY FATHER’S HOUSE longlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

We are thrilled to announce that MY FATHER’S HOUSE by Joseph O’Connor has been longlisted for the 2024 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. This is the second time Joseph O’Connor’s work has been recognised by the prize – with his acclaimed novel SHADOWPLAY making the shortlist in 2020.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is a prestigious literary prize celebrating quality, innovation and ambition of writing, provided the majority of the novel’s storyline is set at least sixty years ago. Previous winners include WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel and THE LONG SONG by Andrea Levy.

The other longlisted titles for this year’s prize are: THE NEW LIFE by Tom Crewe, A BETTER PLACE by Stephen Daisley, THE HOUSE OF DOORS by Tan Twan Eng, HUNGRY GHOSTS by Kevin Jared Hosein, FOR THY GREAT PAIN, HAVE MERCY ON MY LITTLE PAIN by Victoria MacKenzie, MUSIC IN THE DARK by Sally Magnusson, CUDDY by  Benjamin Myers, THE FRAUD by Zadie Smith, MISTER TIMELESS BLYTH by Alan Spence, IN THE UPPER COUNTRY by Kai Thomas, and ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER by Rose Tremain.

Katie Grant, the chair of the judging panel,  said: ‘From the epic to the intimate, from the philosophical to the swashbuckling, from the traditional to the experimental, in each book emotions run deep. If you read the whole list, just like the panel of judges, you’ll never be short of conversation.’ 

From February 2024, the prize is being managed by The Abbotsford Trust, which is responsible for Sir Walter Scott’s Borders home. With the support of The Hawthornden Foundation, and the ongoing patronage of prize founder and Abbotsford patron, the Duke of Buccleuch, the existing Walter Scott Prize team and judges will continue their work.

The shortlist will be announced in May, and the winner announcement and prize-giving event will take at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, in June.

Based on the true story of Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish priest in the Vatican who helped escaped prisoners evade capture in Nazi-occupied Rome, MY FATHER’S HOUSE is a powerful literary thriller from a master of historical fiction. Joseph O’Connor has created an unforgettable novel of love, faith and sacrifice, and what it means to be truly human in extreme circumstances.

MY FATHER’S HOUSE was first published to great acclaim in the UK and Ireland by Harvill Secker in January 2023 and in the US by Europa Editions in April 2023. Translation rights have been sold in Brazil, France, Germany, Italy and Sweden, and film rights are under option.

MY FATHER’S HOUSE has been a stellar success, flying straight to No.1 in Ireland upon publication, occupying the spot for four weeks and selling over 100,000 copies in the English language overall. A Waterstones’ Irish ‘Book of the Month’ for February 2024, it is longlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award and last year was shortlisted for the Eason Novel of the Year Award at the 2023 An Post Irish Book Awards (with Joseph shortlisted for the Library Association of Ireland Author of the Year Award at the same event). Last week MY FATHER’S HOUSE was picked by Peter Kemp as a Sunday Times ‘Paperback of the Week’. 

MY FATHER’S HOUSE has been very well received in its many translation markets – most recently in France where Payot & Rivages are already onto their second reprint and publications like Les chroniques de Goliath are describing it as ‘dazzling… A fiction that dives its roots so deeply into historical truth that it becomes entirely credible.’ You can see more of the international praise below and on Joseph O’Connor’s website.

The Irish ambassadors to Italy and the Vatican have jointly organised a celebratory event at the Irish Embassy in Rome in this month which marks both the release of Harvill Secker’s paperback edition of MY FATHER’S HOUSE and Guanda’s Italian edition of LA CASA DI MIO PADRE.

Joseph is currently completing THE GHOSTS OF ROME, the second novel in the Escape Line trilogy (of which MY FATHER’S HOUSE is the first), which is due to be published by Harvill Secker in the UK and Europa in the UK in 2025.

Photo credit: Urszula Soltys

About Joseph O’Connor

Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin, where he still lives. MY FATHER’S HOUSE is his tenth novel: he is also the author of film scripts, radio and stage plays, two collections of short stories, and several bestselling works of non-fiction.

2022 was the 20th anniversary of Joseph O’Connor’s novel STAR OF THE SEA which was an international bestseller, selling more than a million copies in the UK alone and being published in 38 languages. It won France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, the Irish Post Award for Fiction, the Nielsen Bookscan Golden Book Award, an American Library Association Award, the Hennessy/Sunday Tribune Hall of Fame Award, and the Prix Litteraire Zepter for European Novel of the Year.

He holds an honorary Doctorate in Literature from University College Dublin and received the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature in 2012. He is the Inaugural Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

Praise for MY FATHER’S HOUSE

‘A gripping, compelling and utterly brilliant read.’ – Liz Nugent

‘I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a beautifully produced advance copy of Joseph's new novel. What a joy and privilege to be an early reader of a work of art from a towering figure in world literature. MY FATHER’S HOUSE is a masterwork. No writer in the world can tell a story the way Joseph O’Connor does. He can, without seeming effort, be all things to all readers, taking us by the hand and guiding us into the very heart of a story, his narrative techniques deployed with such unearthly skill that we’re hardly aware that this was written at all, it feels so real, so urgent, so incredibly alive. This novel is a searing and beautiful example of storytelling’s infinite importance, to our humanness, to our chances of learning from our most terrible and our most transcendent moments, and all our moments in between, to hold all life sacred, to see each other as brothers and sisters, to love and protect each other. No wonder he is so cherished and loved by his countless devotees across the earth. He is a national and international treasure, the most generous and noble of writers, a true master of the art.’ – Donal Ryan

‘A spectacular, thrilling novel… offering much more than tensely plotted thrills… MY FATHER’S HOUSE celebrates triumphant against-the-odds camaraderie. It would require a present-day Puccini to do operatic justice to its tremendous tale.’ – Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times

‘This formidable talent for writing across genres is reflected in his masterly 10th novel, which should reap similar plaudits… This is a literary thriller of the highest order. The incarnation of O’Flaherty, the Irish Oskar Schindler, is sublime. What often elevates a writer is compassion, and O’Connor has it in spades – paying tribute to the courage of those who resist tyranny. Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. The plot twists keep on coming until the novel’s coda, where a final joyful conceit is revealed.’ – Lucy Popescu, The Observer

‘Joseph O’Connor’s historical novel MY FATHER’S HOUSE manages to be at once a ripping yarn and a profound exploration of moral choices in the worst of times… With lyrical evocation of time and place, scabrous humour and heart-stopping tension, it combines the pleasures of the ideal holiday read with those of a literary masterpiece.’ – Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times, ‘The Best Books of 2023 so far’

‘This historical thriller is a captivating page-turner.’ – ActuaLitté

‘With his new fiction, Joseph O’Connor once again reinvents the historical genre, intertwining it with elements of suspense typical of noir fiction.’ – Livres Hebdo

‘This book is a real page-turner, where compassion prevails over hatred.’ – L’Arche

‘The interwoven narrative of the protagonists’ testimonies lends a powerful momentum to this page-turner.’ – Benzine

‘In this beautifully written novel, Joseph O’Connor raises the painful question of neutrality. While the Pontiff clings to it like a mussel to its rock, the Irish priest rejects it. He didn’t don the habit to indulge in contemplation. He made a vow of obedience, but his conscience whispers disobedience to him. Do we ever truly know who we are? Only danger reveals it to us. For Hugh O’Flaherty and his choir, doubt is not allowed. Coming from all walks of life, destined never to meet in times of peace, these amateur singers have found each other to form only one audacious soul. Noble heroes on the altar of sacrifice, on the altar of humanity.’ – La Vie en Noir

Visit Joseph’s website

JOSEPH O’CONNOR’S SHADOWPLAY SHORTLISTED FOR WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION AND THE JEAN MONNET PRIZE

Joseph O’Connor’s wonderful novel SHADOWPLAY has been shortlisted for two awards in recent weeks: The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in the UK and the Jean Monnet Prize in France. The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction rewards writing of exceptional quality set in the past, whilst the Jean Monnet Prize celebrates work translated or written in French in the past year. The Jean Monnet Prize will be announced at the LEC festival on 21 November 2020; the date of the prize ceremony for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is still to be confirmed.

Harvill Secker published SHADOWPLAY in the UK and Canada in June 2019, with a paperback to be published in May 2020, and Editions Rivages published in France. It was described as a ‘literary highlight of 2019’ by The Sunday Times and has received rapturous reviews. Le Monde called it ‘mesmerising’ and Le Figaro described it as ‘an ensemble masterpiece with glorious resonances.’ Europa will publish in June 2020 in the US, where the novel has received starred previews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, which described it as ‘an authentic and deeply moving literary experience’. In the UK, W.F. Howes published the audio edition, read by Barry McGovern and Anna Chancellor, and Dreamscape will publish the US audio edition. Rights have been sold in eight translation markets so far: China (Shanghai Elegant People), Croatia (Fraktura), France (Editions Rivages), Hungary (Helikon), Italy (Guanda), Serbia (Carobna Knjiga), Sweden (Natur Och Kultur) and Turkey (Sia Kitap). A film deal is under negotiation.

1878: The Lyceum Theatre, London. Three extraordinary people begin their life together, a life that will be full of drama, transformation, passionate and painful devotion to art and to one another. Henry Irving, the Chief, is the volcanic leading man and impresario; Ellen Terry is the most lauded and desired actress of her generation, outspoken and generous of heart; and ever following along behind them in the shadows is the unremarkable theatre manager, Bram Stoker.

Fresh from life in Dublin as a clerk, Bram may seem the least colourful of the trio, but he is wrestling with dark demons in a new city, in a new marriage, and with his own literary aspirations. As he walks the London streets at night, streets haunted by the Ripper and the gossip which swirls around his friend Oscar Wilde, he finds new inspiration. But the Chief is determined that nothing will get in the way of his manager’s devotion to the Lyceum and to himself. And both men are enchanted by the beauty and boldness of the elusive Ellen.

SHADOWPLAY explores the complexities of love that stands dangerously outside social convention, the restlessness of creativity, and the experiences that led to Dracula, the most iconic supernatural tale of all time.

Praise for Joseph O’Connor and SHADOWPLAY:
‘There are few living writers who can take us back in time so assuredly, with such sensual density, through such gorgeous sentences. Joseph O’Connor is a wonder, and SHADOWPLAY is a triumph.’ – Peter Carey

‘As much as this is a hugely entertaining book about the grand scope of friendship and love, it is also, movingly – at times, agonisingly – a story of transience, loss and true loyalty.’ – Sadie Jones, The Guardian

‘Joseph O’Connor is a very great artist and storyteller. The quotient of enjoyment in his extraordinary new novel is stupendous.’ – Sebastian Barry

‘Wonderful. The writing is beautiful.’ – Derek Jacobi

‘A hugely entertaining and atmospheric novel, one can almost smell the greasepaint.’ – Deborah Moggach

‘Seriously fascinating’ – Colm Tóibín, The Observer

‘A virtuoso act of literary ventriloquism. SHADOWPLAY is funny, smart, tender, wise and written with inch-perfect precision.’ – Colum McCann

‘A great writer performing Olympian literary storytelling.’ — Bob Geldof

About the Author
Joseph O’Connor was born in Dublin. His books include nine novels: COWBOYS AND INDIANS (Whitbread Prize shortlist), DESPERADOES, THE SALESMAN, INISHOWEN, STAR OF THE SEA (American Library Association Award, Irish Post Award for Fiction, France’s Prix Millepages, Italy’s Premio Acerbi, Prix Madeleine Zepter for European novel of the year), REDEMPTION FALLS, GHOST LIGHT (Dublin One City One Book Novel 2011), THE THRILL OF IT ALL and SHADOWPLAY. His work has been published in forty languages. He received the 2012 Irish PEN Award for outstanding achievement in literature and in 2014 he was appointed Frank McCourt Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Limerick.

Visit Joseph O’Connor’s website